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THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 



THE 
ROOTS OF THE WAR 

A NON-TECHNICAL HISTORY 
OF EUROPE 1870-1914 A.D. 



BY 



WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, Ph.D. 



IN COLLABORATION WITH 

WILLIAM ANDERSON, Ph.D. 

AND 

MASON W. TYLER, Ph.D. 

OF THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



■V* 



v«y 



Copyright, 1918, by 
The Century Co. 



Reprinted, September, 1918 
Reprinted, October, 1918, Four Times 



1U t 

/ ,r 



TO 

THE GREAT HOST OF YOUNG MEN 

WHO HAVE GONE FORTH FROM THE CLASSROOMS 

OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 

TO IMPERIL THEIR LIVES 

THAT RIGHTEOUSNESS MAY NOT PERISH 

BEFORE AUTOCRACY 



INTRODUCTION 

This history has been written during the stressful period 
since the United States became a participant in the ' great 
World War. It is not, however, merely a "war book." It 
is an attempt to relate in a non-technical fashion the history 
of the development of the various forces that led up to the 
catastrophe of 1914. The leader of the American Republic, 
himself a historian as well as a statesman, has stated that "you 
can explain most wars very simply, but the explanation of 
this war is not so simple. Its roots run deep into all the ob- 
scure soils of history. " 1 It is to discover some of these roots 
and their fateful growths that this book is written. 

By general consent the period of history which ended hi 
1914 saw its beginning in 1870 when the Prussian militarists 
won their original triumph over France, thereby establishing 
a precedent for the use of armed force as a wise supplement 
to flagging diplomacy, a precedent that was to be applied 
with incalculable effect upon a much greater field of action 
forty-four years later. During this interval many national 
and international forces were at work simultaneously, which 
all together helped to produce the climax of Armageddon. 
Of course, however, not all the factors that were very prom- 
inent in the history of the period contributed directly to this 
terrific end. For example, socialism, potent as it was, does 
not seem to have helped to bring about the final war, except 
indirectly, by making the junker lords of Prussia fearful at 
its progress, and therefore the more willing to try desperate 
remedies to wean the German people from the new heresy by 
the counter-excitements and joys of a great military victory. 
The many colonial and domestic questions of Great Britain 
also, although of large historical importance, did little di- 
rectly to hasten the war, save by making the Pan-Germans 
believe that their island rivals were so beset with internal 

i President Wilson, address at Buffalo, November 12, 1917. 



INTRODUCTION 

issues that Britons would probably let the Teutonic empires 
crush France and Russia unhindered, leaving the British 
Empire to be devoured a little later. 

Many things, therefore, that would have an honored place 
in any comprehensive general history can be wisely omitted 
from this: nor has there been any attempt at formal discus- 
sion of the interests of the United States in Old World affairs 
before 1914. But in the opinion of the writers of this book 
there were three dominant factors in the international rela- 
tions of the last forty years that enabled the Pan-German 
conspirators to bring on the great calamity in the precise form 
in which it finally inflicted itself upon the world. These 
were: 

I. The old hate between France and Germany, nourished 
by the unhealed and unforgetable Alsace-Lorraine question. 

II. The newer hate between Britain and Germany, caused 
partly by commercial rivalry, but much more by the over- 
weening jealousy of the Pan-Germans of the British colonial 
empire, and by the antipathy inevitable between two great 
nations, one essentially liberal and non-militaristic, the other 
precisely the reverse. 

III. The eternal Balkan question, the problem of the dis- 
position of the dying Turkish Empire and the straining anx- 
iety of Russia on the one hand and Germany and Austria on 
the other to become the preferred heirs to the "Sick Man of 
Europe." 

These three factors came to play simultaneously into the 
hands of the Pan-German schemers, master-financiers and 
manufacturers, doctrinaire professors, irresponsible journal- 
ists, highly-titled officers, princely and royal "Serenities" 
and "Highnesses," and above these finally, it would seem, 
the "All-Highest" himself, in their deliberate conspiracy to 
achieve at one or, at most, two or three ruthless and gigantic 
strokes of the sword, the establishment of a world empire, an 
Empire of Teutonia, indescribably vaster, richer, more irre- 
sistible, more universal than that of imperial Rome. 

This book undertakes to outline the circumstances that made 
this inconceivably daring attempt seem possible. 



AUTHORS' NOTE 

The majority of the chapters of this book have been written 
by Mr. William Stearns Davis. Chapters VII, VIII, and 
XVI have been written by Mr. William Anderson, and chap- 
ters XIV, XIX, and XXI by Mr. Mason W. Tyler. Each 
collaborator is responsible for the final form of his state- 
ments, although in every case his two friends have given care- 
ful scrutiny to his work. The maps and statistical tables 
have been prepared by the kindness of Mr. Paul S. Smith, 
assistant in history in this university. 

The authors have felt keenly the difficulty of handling 
highly controversial subjects in a scientific spirit during this 
time of great public stress. They have sometimes expressed 
robust opinions and have not hesitated to call a spade a spade. 
They have made a faithful effort, however, to write with a 
due sense of historical as well as patriotic responsibility, and 
to record nothing that they would, as scholars, be ashamed to 
review after peace and normal councils have returned. They 
are all three absolutely persuaded of the justice of the great 
cause in behalf of which this book is written, and their spirit 
was well expressed by a British scholar, Mr. J. W. Headlam, 
when he wrote in the preface of his ' ' History of Twelve Days, ' ' 
published in 1915 : "It would be foolish to claim the merit 
of impartiality. Impartiality means indifference to the re- 
sults of investigation, and to us the results are of vital mo- 
ment. I will say this [however]. ... I have written noth- 
ing which I do not believe to be true. Had I found in the 
course of the work that the result would be unfavorable to the 
justice and honesty of the cause [of the foes of Germany], 
I should have adopted the only possible course and kept silent 
until the war was over. ' ' 

W. S. D. 
The University of Minnesota: W. A. 

Minneapolis, Minnesota. M. W. T. 

March, 1918. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
CHAPTER ^ _. q 

I The Great War Which Bred a Greater . . . . a 

II Bismarck and the Europe op 1871 24 

39 
59 
77 
98 
115 
140 
162 



III The Neighbors of the New German Empire . 

IV The Ottoman Turks and Their Balkan Subjects 
V The Sick Man of Europe and His Surgeons . 

VI Britain in Egypt 

VII The Third Republic and Its Trials .... 

VIII Free Italy and Its Consolidation .... 

IX The New German Empire and Its Genius . . 

X The Old Pilot and the New Captain of Germany 194 

XI The Unhappy Frontier Lands of the Hohenzol- ' 

LERNS 

XII The Balkan Kingdoms and Their Revolutions . 249 
XIII Abdul Hamid, "The Red Sultan"-His Deeds and ^ 

Downfall 

XIV The Hapsburg Empire and Its Discordant Sub- ^ 

JECTS 

qnQ 

XV The Building of the Alliances 

XVI The Promise and Failure of the Hague Peace ^ 

Conference 

XVII The Development of the Pan-Germanic Dream . 345 
XVIII The Growing Enmity of Britain and Germany . 374 

402 
XIX The Storm Center in Morocco 

XX The Tearing-Up of the Treaty of Berlin-The ^ 
Balkan Wars . 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI Russian Policy and the Great War 450 

XXII The Last Years in the Fool's Paradise .... 465 

XXIII Sowing the Wind — The Serbian Note .... 490 

XXIV Reaping the Whirlwind — The Scrap of Paper . 518 

Appendix 

Lists of Rulers of Great Powers of Europe 
Since 1870 537 

Growth of the British, German, and French 
Colonial Empires Since 1870 538 

Populations of the Great European Powers in 
the Generation Before 1914 540 

Books on European Diplomacy 541 

Index 547 



LIST OF MAPS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Turkey in Europe and Its Dependencies Before 1876 . . 64 

The Danish, Polish, and Alsatian Frontier-Lands of Ger- 
many 232 

The Balkan Peninsula After the Settlements of Ber- 
lin, 1878 254 

Turkey-in-Asia 274 

The Races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914 . . . 294 

The Balkan Peninsula After the Treaty of Bucharest, 

1913 446 



THE 
ROOTS OF THE WAR 



THE GENIUS OF PBUSSIANISM 

"The decision on these principles [of liberty against monarchy] 
will not come by parliamentary debates, nor by majorities of eleven 
votes. Sooner or later the God who directs the battle will cast His 
iron dice." (Bismarck, in the Prussian assembly, March 22, 1849.) 

"I look for Prussian honor in Prussia's abstinence from any 
shameful union with democracy." (Bismarck, speaking in 1850.) 

"Thor stood at the mid-night end of the world, 

His battle-mace flew from his hand: 
'So far as my clangorous hammer I 've hurled 

Mine are the sea and the land !' 
And onward hurtled the mighty sledge 

O'er the wide, wide earth to fall 
At last on the Southland's furthest edge 

In token that his was all. — 
Since then 'tis the joyous German right 

With the hammer lands to win. 
We mean to inherit world-wide might 

As the Hammer-God's kith and kin." 

(Felix Dahn, in 1878.) 1 

"I hope that to Germany it will be granted ... to become in the 
future as closely united, as powerful, and as authoritative as was 
once the Roman Empire." (Emperor William II, speaking in 1900.) 

THE FRUITAGE OF PRUSSIANISM 

"The object of this war [against Germany] is to deliver the free 
peoples of the world from the menace and actual power of a vast 
military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government 
which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to 
carry out the plan without regard either to the sacred obligations 
of treaty or the long established practices of international action and 
honor: which chose its own time for the war: delivered its blow 
fiercely and suddenly: stopped at no barrier either of law or of 
mercy: [and] swept a whole continent within a tide of blood — not 
the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and 
children also and of the helpless poor." (President Wilson to Pope 
Benedict XV, August 27, 1917.) 

i By kind permission of Doubleday, Page and Company. 



THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

CHAPTER I 

THE GREAT WAR WHICH BRED A GREATER 

ON the evening of July 13, 1870, three high-born gentle- 
men found themselves around a dining-table in Berlin. 
The first of these was Otto von Bismarck, minister-president 
of Prussia: the second was llellmuth von Moltke, chief of 
staff of the Prussian army : the third was Albrecht von Roon, 
Prussian minister of war. 

While they discussed the international situation, a tele- 
gram was brought in to Bismarck, and the others watched 
him anxiously. The wire was from their king, William I of 
Prussia, who was at the watering-place of Ems, and related 
to an interview he had had with the French ambassador, 
Benedetti, relative to the proposed candidacy of a Hohen- 
zollern prince for the vacant throne of Spain. Foolish 
speeches against "Prussian aggressions " and ambitions in 
Spain had been uttered in Paris, and the French ambassador 
had been unduly importunate in demanding of the king not 
merely that he discourage his kinsman, the Prince of Hohen- 
zollern, from seeking the Spanish throne at that time, but that 
he also pledge the same policy for all the future. King Wil- 
liam I, however, was a kind-hearted and moderate man, and 
although he refused the French requests, he had parted with 
Benedetti in a manner that left an honorable retreat open to 
the Paris cabinet and to its emperor, Napoleon III. In France 
there were, indeed, headstrong fire-eaters, but there were also 
sensible statesmen who were quite willing to meet the king half- 
way and not let a petty incident provoke a great war. There- 
fore King William had sent a fair and non-irritating account 

3 



4 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of what had taken place in Ems, and had left to Bismarck, 
his minister, the task of deciding whether or not to communi- 
cate the facts to the public. 

But Bismarck's heart was not set on peace, nor was that 
of Moltke, nor that of Roon. The prime-minister who a few 
years earlier had publicly avowed that German national unity 
could be won only by "blood and iron," and who in behalf 
of that unity had provoked two easily avoidable wars, first 
with Denmark in 1864 and then with Austria in 1866, had 
now come to believe that France would never be a contented 
neighbor to a consolidated Germany, that war with her was in- \ 
evitable, and that such a war would bring into the union led . 
by Prussia those South German states that had refused to j 
enter the North German Confederation founded by Bismarck 
after the defeat of Austria in 1866. 

He had been filled with wrath at what seemed the too 
yielding attitude of his king toward France, and his feelings 
were completely shared by Moltke and by Roon. They saw 
the opportunity for precipitating a war with France slipping | 
away, and were depressed and melancholy at the whole pros- ; 
pect. Perhaps at some later day, when France had modern- 
ized her army and had secured an abler leader than the semi- 
invalid Napoleon III, they would have to fight at greater 
military disadvantage. Also the desired inclusion of Baden, \ 
Wurtemberg, and Bavaria under Prussian leadership might 
have to wait a few years longer. These three high-born gen- 
tlemen, therefore, had been sitting over their Rhenish, silent | 
and moody; but now Bismarck, studying the telegram, sud- j 
denly realized that the fates were playing into his hands. 
The king had given him permission to decide what kind of 
an abstract of his message to give to the papers, and the man 
who had crushed Denmark and Austria would use all his j 
power. 

The minister-president therefore strode into the next room 
and, bending over a table, with ready pencil "edited" the 
royal despatch. By striking out a clause here, by rendering 
a shade harsher a phrase there, and by generally excluding 
all expressions of conciliation and kindliness, Bismarck trans- 



THE GREAT WAR 5 

I formed what had been a studiously moderate document into 
what seemed a deliberate challenge to war. William was 
made to treat the French envoy with almost incredible brusk- 
ness and discourtesy, and finally to have ''shown him the 
door " ; as at least all Paris soon furiously asserted. 

The revised despatch was read to Moltke and Roon amid 
their warmly expressed approval. 

"Before it sounded like a parley," declared Moltke; "now 
it is a defiance." 

Bismarck asked a few questions about the state of the army. 
Roon assured him that all was ready. Moltke declared that 
nothing could be absolutely certain in a great war, but that 
he looked on the future with calm anticipation. So the min- 
ister and the two generals spent a merry social hour, confi- 
dent now that all chances of peace were gone and that two 
mighty nations were headed straight toward bloodshed, and 
thanking their "good old German God" who had brought it 
all to pass. 

Soon another messenger was summoned. Bismarck gave 
him the new despatch, to be published under the inaccurate 
date-line of "Ems" in every German newspaper, and to be 
wired to every Prussian embassy. The next morning all the 
world was reading how the King of Prussia had "turned his 
back" on the French ambassador. "There is little doubt," 
says an authoritative historian, peculiarly favorable to the 
German cause, "that had this telegram been worded differ- 
ently, the Franco-German struggle might have been avoided." * 
The responsibility for deluging two great nations with blood 
and, incidentally, for sowing very many of the dragon's teeth 
that were to spring up for a fearful harvest in 1914 must, 
therefore, rest largely with Otto von Bismarck and his two 
jovial friends. 

This does not save the ministers of Napoleon III from the 
charge of criminal folly and recklessness in forcing the 
quarrel about the "Spanish candidacy" to a point where 
Bismarck could catch them in the terrible dilemma of either 

i Henderson, "Short History of Germany," II, p. 419. 



6 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

submitting to national humiliation or declaring a war for t 
which they were grievously unprepared. 

The foreign minister, Gramont, afterward plaintively ex- 
cused himself by saying that he would never have pressed the : 
issue had not the military men grossly misled him as to the 
state of the French army. Bismarck, however, bears all the 
responsibility of a calm, intelligent man who deliberately eggs 
on an excited, ignorant one to begin a bloody quarrel. 

The great minister in later years was to boast of his act 
and to expatiate upon the details. The facts are undeniable, f 
and in after days German statesmen, to whom the example of 
Bismarck loomed as that of a second Jupiter, were taught to 
consider robust deeds like these to be the very essence of wise i 
patriotism. The Ems despatch was in the mind of every 
officer and diplomat who met around the council table of the 
grandson of William I, when that grandson summoned his 
mighty men to Potsdam late in July, 1914, to consider de- 
claring war on Russia and France and violating the neutral- 
ity of Belgium. 

" Nothing succeeds like success." This is an American 
saying, probably of slight ethical value. During the next 
decades, however, it made Bismarck seem the king of all 
statesmen. There had been a strong peace party at Paris, 
despite much jealousy and dislike toward Prussia. The 
''Spanish-candidature" episode had seemed on the point of 
being happily lived down, despite high words and newspaper 
froth. Then, like a bolt from the blue, came the outrageous 
Bismarckian version of the king's interview with Benedetti. 
The warm summer weather had filled the Paris boulevards, 
and the light-headed irresponsible mob simply thundered its 
cries for war, ' ' To Berlin ! ' ' French honor, the honor of the 
most sensitive people in Europe, had been insulted before all 
the world. The last arguments for peace were stifled in the 
French cabinet. Napoleon III, the great adventurer, was 
none too secure upon his throne. To have refused this chal- 
lenge to arms would have ruined his prestige with the two 
elements which then held the rulers of France in the hollow 
of their hands, the army and the populace of Paris. The 



THE GREAT WAR 7 

French Chamber of Deputies was in a white heat. Ollivier, 
the premier, almost a pacifist in his former tendencies, up- 
lifted his voice for action. "If ever a war was necessary/ ' 
he cried, "it is this war to which Prussia drives us. We con- 
tinued to negotiate [for a peaceful issue], and in the mean- 
time they announce to Europe that they have shown our envoy 
the door. ' ' The chamber voted for war by two hundred and 
forty-six, against only ten for peace. The streets of Paris 
rang with cheers and patriotic music, while men stood about 
telling tales of Jena and of the first Napoleon's victorious 
march through Prussia, followed by the glorious peace of 
Tilsit. In a few days the opposing diplomats had closed their 
embassies in Berlin and Paris, exchanged declarations of war, 
and had bowed their respective farewells "with the highest 
personal consideration," while the two greatest nations of 
continental Europe rang with the turmoil of mobilization. 
Bismarck and Moltke were to have their wish. 

The story of the months that followed should have been 
writ large in the school history -books of every American who 
had grown up imagining that successful armies could be 
created in a day. It was because the fearful facts developed 
in 1870 were not forgotten by the French nation that the 
world did not fall promptly under Teutonic dominion in 1914, 
when an even greater struggle was loosed upon the earth. 
Recent events have amply demonstrated, even to their foes, 
that the French are, at the very least, as brave, as valorous, 
and as capable of patriotic effort and sacrifice as any of their 
rivals, and are past-masters in the modern science of war. 
But the contest of 1870 gave a perfect illustration of the 
futility of mere bravery and patriotism, when without proper 
preparation or leadership it is required to cope with a scien- 
tifically constructed war-machine controlled by a competent 
general staff. 

The army of Prussia and of the South German allied states 
(Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden) was essentially the same 
type of army as that which in 1914 went across Belgium and 
which was halted only at the Marne. Between 1870 and the 
later date it had, of course, become larger, with more up-to- 



8 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

date weapons and other military appliances, and with some . 
improvements in organization. But, in the main, in 1914 it 
was still essentially the developed creation of Moltke and of 
Roon, perpetuated, but not case-hardened. 

The army of France in 1870 was absolutely different from 
that second fighting machine which, mobilizing a little more 
slowly in 1914 than its rival and swept back at first, turned, j 
nevertheless, and saved Paris, France, and the world for 
democracy in those great September days one short month 
after the beginning of Armageddon. The soldier of Napo- 
leon III was just as skilful, brave, and patriotic as his grand- 
sire under Napoleon the Great, or his son under Joffre, but the 
lack of scientific preparation and capable leadership doomed 
him to fight with one hand tied behind his back. The result 
was the abject humiliation of France. 

Napoleon III, the purple-clad adventurer "condemned to 
be brilliant," who had vainly tried to persuade the world 
that he was a worthy successor of his mighty uncle, had gained 
his throne by too devious methods to be able to place the best 
talent of France in charge of his armies. Many of his gen- 
erals were superannuated and incapable; others were down- 
right soldiers of fortune, more loyal to their own interests 
than to their nation. Universal military training had been 
introduced into France very imperfectly. A large part of 
the population had been exempted from conscription. The 
reserves for the regular professional army were inadequate. 
The railways were ill-arranged for mobilization. Many arti- 
cles for equipping the troops were missing. The field-artillery 
guns were notoriously inferior to the German. Above all, a 
competent commander-in-chief was soon discovered to be ut- 
terly lacking. Everything, in short, was amiss, except the 
bravery and patriotism of the private and field officers, and 
in the circumstances these were to be miserably sacrificed. 
It was a case where a nation, proud, courageous, and poten- 
tially containing the best fighting material in the world, but 
acting under an overwhelming handicap, was to be pitted 
against Moltke 's relentless fighting-machine. 

When the French armies began to mobilize around their 



THE GREAT WAR 9 

great frontier towns of Metz and Strassburg, the confusion 
of their system would have been ludicrous, had not the price 
of the laugh been the ruin of the nation. The officers sent to 
defend the boundary telegraphed back that they had no maps 
of France, although they had many of Germany "soon to be 
invaded." An artillery general reported that out of eight 
hundred horse-collars sent him, five hundred were too tight 
for his horses. A brigadier-general wired Paris: "I have 
not found my brigade or my superior commander. What 
shall I do? Don't know the whereabouts of my regiments." 
Yet all the time Moltke's mobilization was proceeding like 
clock-work, so much so that, according to a popular tale, when 
the final declaration of war had been handed the general late 
one night, he had simply turned to his orderly, saying, "Go 

to my desk and telegraph file No. ," and had peacefully 

retired to bed. All had been prearranged. Prussian and 
South German mobilization had proceeded without the slight- 
est hitch or hindrance, and speedily vast hosts were pouring 
down to the Rhinelands, ready to burst over the frontiers. 

When actual hostilities began, Moltke disposed of nearly 
five hundred thousand men, besides ample reserves. Napo- 
leon TIT, if certain paper projects had been executed, should 
have had nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand, but the 
French program had been only nominally executed. In fact, 
the very year that the war broke out a scheme for reducing 
the size of the army had been agitated by the pacifists of 1870. 
Napoleon III had not assembled many more than three hun- 
dred and fifty thousand men before he ceased to be emperor. 
Some of these troops were grievously ill-equipped, and not 
one of the major armies was properly concentrated. The 
only real chance the French had for victory was by a quick 
dash into southern Germany, where the alliances between the 
local governments and Prussia were still new, and very pos- 
sibly, in case of defeats, unstable. A blow there, before Prus- 
sian mobilization was completed, might have produced great 
results, but this chance was entirely thrown away by the 
delay in assembling the French armies. Napoleon III, there- 
fore, seemed able only to string out his men in rather isolated 



10 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

detachments along the frontiers and await the Prussian thun- I 
derbolt. The initiative had thus passed at the outset to Ger- I 
many, and to secure the initiative in war involves winning « 
half the battle. In Paris, meanwhile, the crowds, deceived | 
by a mendacious censorship and assured by the imperial min- 
isters that "the army was ready down to the last gaiter- 
lacing,' ' complained angrily because no great victories were 
as yet reported. 

Napoleon III had one really capable general, Marshal Mac- 
Mahon, but he was not in command at Metz, where the main 
French Army was mustering. The emperor, sick, distracted 
by silly counsels, and beset with fears for his political future, 
tried for a while to play the commander-in-chief himself. 
MacMahon was put in charge of the forces in Alsace, the 
second theater of war, where he was isolated from his supports 
and inferior in numbers to the Germans concentrating against 
him. On August 6, Prince Frederick Charles, leader of the 
Prussian advance, fell upon him at the heights of Worth. 
The French cavalry scouting had been very poor, and they 
did not realize how they were outnumbered, or they might not 
have risked a battle. As it was, forty thousand Frenchmen 
tried to halt the progress of eighty thousand Teutons. Mac- 
Mahon beat off all frontal attacks, until superior numbers 
turned his flank and made his case hopeless. The French did 
all that brave men well could, but presently they left the field 
in what was little better than a rout. Moltke's machine had 
struck its first blow. 

On this same day there had been a second battle in Lorraine, 
at Spicheren, where another German army collided with Gen- 
eral Frossard's corps. At first the French had superior num- 
bers and superior chances. But by a fatality Frossard him- 
self was absent from the field when the fight began, telegraph- 
ing to his superiors at Metz. No subordinate dared order 
a grand charge. Still the French held their own, and did 
even better until almost evening, when Frossard, who had re- 
turned to find his opportunity gone, began to fear lest German 
reinforcements were getting near his line of retreat, and 
ordered a complete retirement. The French had almost won 



THE GREAT WAR 11 

the day, and yet they lost the battle. The soldiers were becom- 
ing sullen and were beginning to lose confidence in their 
leaders, who obviously were without ability as organizers, 
strategists, or tacticians. 

After these two blows there was still greater demoralization 
and almost despair at the imperial headquarters in Metz. 
The Germans were pressing forward relentlessly ; nevertheless 
the main French Army was still unbeaten. Under a good 
commander it could have made a successful stand, but 
Napoleon III and his parasites were losing their grip on the 
situation. After wasting time in senselessly marching and 
counter-marching much of the army, the emperor resigned the 
actual command at Metz to Marshal Bazaine. The latter 
was a bluff, high-speaking officer, with a considerable reputa- 
tion founded on easy successes in Mexico, but he also had a 
tendency to play the politician as well as the soldier. The 
position at Metz was so bad that Bazaine quickly resolved to 
retreat across the Moselle and put his army under the forts 
of Verdun. But now intervened more procrastination and 
irresolution, and the Prussians came still closer at his heels. 
On the fourteenth of August, while Bazaine was trying to 
march out of Metz to the west, the German advance-guard 
attacked his rear from the east. The French flung back this 
force, but it was no real victory. Bazaine 's retreat had been 
halted at a time when every hour had become precious. On 
the fifteenth the German cavalry was over the Moselle, south 
of Metz, and threatened to cut the roads to Verdun. On the 
sixteenth there was infantry with the cavalry, and the battle 
of Mars-la-Tour, or Vionville, was fought. 

The next day Bazaine pretended that he had won a success. 
Actually he had sustained a disastrous defeat. One hundred 
and thirty thousand French troops were on the scene and 
only half as many Prussians ; yet the Teutons throughout kept 
the offensive, and their foes had one exhibition after another 
of the bungling of their own commanders. "When some 
French divisions won ground, there came no reinforcements, 
because Bazaine worried more about keeping open the road in 
his rear, toward Metz, than the one to safety, toward Verdun. 



12 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 



On the seventeenth the great main French Army ignomini- 
ously fell back on Metz for ammunition and supplies, while 
the steady advance of King William 's legions over the Moselle 
bridges brought nearer the next act in the tragedy. 

On the eighteenth of August, Moltke attacked Bazaine be- 
fore Metz. His aim was to drive the French back under the 
fortress's guns, block their roads of retreat west and north, 
and so pen up the whole army. This battle is commonly | 
called Gravelotte, from one of the small villages around which 
the tempest raged. The German victory was complete. 
Moltke had now about two hundred thousand men against 
only one hundred and forty thousand Frenchmen. But if 
Bazaine had been a great leader he need not have lost. He 
was, in fact, only a small man overwhelmed by a tremendous 
situation. Many of his corps held their own admirably 
against all attacks, but his right wing, where the German 
assault proved fiercest, received no reinforcements, although 
within a few miles of the danger-point lay ample reserves. 
Bazaine was holding these back, because he was foolishly in 
terror for his left wing, where there was not the slightest real 
danger. The French right was thus crumpled up, and their 
whole line being outflanked, they fell back hastily upon the 
strong fortress of Metz. 

The main French army was, therefore, mewed up around 
Metz. Speedily it became evident that Bazaine lacked both 
energy and power to cut his way through to safety. The 
railroad and telegraph were, of course, soon severed by the 
enemy, and he could only communicate occasionally with the 
emperor by means of disguised messengers. It is needless to 
say that he called lustily for help. 

A semblance of an army was still left to Napoleon III, 
however. MacMahon, after escaping from Worth, had been 
reorganizing his beaten forces, plus some reinforcements and 
some unreliable reserve divisions at Chalons. This array was 
so obviously inferior to the host that Moltke could detach 
from the siege of Metz and aim straight toward Paris, that 
MacMahon considered it futile to risk another pitched battle. 
Sorely as it hurt his French pride, the marshal realized that 



THE GREAT WAR 13 

there was only one really wise thing to do, to retire from 
Chalons toward Paris, fighting delaying actions and, for a 
while at least, leaving Bazaine to his fate. The latter had 
supplies to hold out for two months and by drawing the Ger- 
mans far from their base and by allowing time to organize the 
great resources of France, MacMahon could hope to turn and 
rend the invader. This was an intelligent program. It was 
very like Joffre's scheme in 1914, when after the first efforts 
to hold the lines in Belgium had failed, that doughty French- 
man retreated to the Marne and under better conditions won 
a terrific battle. But MacMahon was far less fortunate than 
his successor. Behind Joffre was a Government brave and 
willing to trust France. Behind MacMahon was a coterie of 
self-seeking adventurers and sordid politicians who constituted 
the court and cabinet of "Napoleon the Little." Already 
Paris was growling because no victories had been reported and 
because the invader was on French soil. The emperor was 
vainly telegraphing * ' all can be recovered, ' ' and his ministers 
were now reduced to the shifts of issuing lying bulletins, pre- 
tending that it was only for high strategic reasons that they 
did not give out news which would cause the capital "to be 
illuminated. ' ' At the Tuileries, in fact, there was much more 
fear of the Paris mob than of the advancing Prussians. Base 
politics had left France unprepared for Avar; baser politics 
were now to destroy her last chance of averting defeat. 

When MacMahon announced that he intended to retire from 
Chalons toward Paris, consternation reigned in the imperial 
ministry. Comte de Palikao, the incapable minister of war, 
telegraphed that if he abandoned Bazaine, there would be 
"the gravest consequences [that is, a revolution] in Paris." 
Napoleon III, who had slipped away from Metz in the nick 
of time, had not dared to return to his capital with only 
reports of disasters. He was with MacMahon, not in direct 
command, but not giving his general the proper moral sup- 
port to withstand the protests from Paris. MacMahon 's 
heart was heavy, but he dared not disobey Palikao, more 
especially as vague messages were being smuggled through 
from Bazaine conveying the idea that he intended to break 



14 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

out of Metz toward the north and hoped that MacMahon would \ 
arrange to join him. That marshal, therefore, ordered his , 
poorly organized one hundred and fifty thousand men to 
march not toward Paris, but toward the Meuse, headed some- 
where between Verdun and Sedan, on the desperate chance 
that he could get into direct touch with Bazaine. 

This new movement was so contrary to all rules of sound 
strategy that for a few days the Prussian general staff could 
not believe the French would uncover the road to their capital 
and despatch their only remaining free army on a wild-goose | 
chase. After their cavalry scouts had confirmed the rumors, 
however, an overwhelming body of German troops was sent 
after MacMahon. Had the French been a picked force, well 
provided with cavalry scouts and with good transport service, 
they might have got safely across the Meuse and worked into 
contact with Bazaine. But many of the brigades were com- 
posed of raw, soft men, and the baggage-train was pitifully 
inadequate. The columns merely crawled forward, and later 
the approach of the Prussians made the French hustle in con- 
fusion from one place to another, seeking some temporary 
refuge. On the twenty-eighth of August the state of affairs 
was so bad that MacMahon for the last time resolved to order 
a retreat, but Palikao telegraphed him again, "If you desert 
Bazaine, there will be a revolution in Paris," and the luckless 
general preferred to face the strong chances of defeat and 
capture if he held on, to slander and disgrace if he fell back. 

On the thirtieth of August MacMahon found himself across 
the Meuse, indeed, but with his whole army piled upon Sedan, 
a little town wedged between the river and the Belgian fron- 
tier. On the thirty-first the weary French waited carelessly, 
uncertain of their own plans and ignorant of their imminent ; 
danger, but on the afternoon of that day they suddenly found 
the Germans closing in on them from all sides. The next 
morning the trap was sprung. 

September 1, 1870, saw the climax. The French were out- 
numbered almost two to one, lacked confidence in their leaders, 
and were in a veritable pocket between hills and river, where 
the Germans could seize all the heights commanding the valley 



THE GREAT WAR 15 

and rake it with their cannon. The resistance was gallant 
and desperate. The French ''marine infantry" repeatedly 
forced back the attackers. The cavalry, which had failed 
utterly in its proper task of scouting, now flung away its 
lives recklessly in heroic, though vain, charges upon the 
Prussian guns. By afternoon the last avenue of escape had 
been closed, and the French were being forced back into the 
small fortress of Sedan, now subjected from every side to a 
terrible converging fire. MacMahon had been wounded, and 
there was a disgraceful contention among the other generals 
as to who was next in command. At last Napoleon III, 
realizing that further resistance meant slaughter, ordered the 
white flag to be raised and sent this memorable letter to King 
William : 

Monsieur, my brother: Not having been able to die in the midst 
of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in the hands 
of your Majesty. I am your Majesty's good brother, 

Napoleon. 

Moltke was adamant to the pleas of the French leaders for 
better terms than absolute surrender. Bismarck declared 
bluntly that the French were an envious and jealous people on 
whose gratitude it was useless to count, and that magnanimity, 
therefore, was quite out of place. There was no possible 
escape for the trapped army, and eighty-one thousand men — 
including, as the German despatches gleefully reported, "one 
emperor," — gave themselves up on September 2. Earlier in 
the battle over thirty-seven thousand men had been killed, 
wounded, or taken prisoner. There had almost never been a 
like overthrow in all history. 

Bazaine already had made a blundering attempt on the 
thirty-first of August to cut his way out of Metz. It had 
failed completely. One French army was therefore firmly 
blockaded ; the second had been captured outright. There was 
no effective force between the Germans and Paris. 

By September 19, Moltke had drawn his lines around Paris 
and was pressing against the forts that encircled that city, 
but it was not the old government of the Second Empire 



16 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

which now resisted him. Late on the third of September 
tidings of the disaster at Sedan began to leak out in the great 
anxious capital. Soon crowds were parading the streets, 
shouting, "Down with the empire, long live the republic!" 
The Empress-Regent Eugenie, and her minister, Palikao, 
were powerless. General Trochu, commander of the garrison, 
gave them little aid. By the fourth the upheaval had taken 
an organized form. Prominent Liberals and old Republican 
leaders, enemies of the Bonaparte dynasty, seized the helm of 
state with the prompt consent of garrison and populace. A 
Republican Government of National Defense sprang into 
being and was accepted everywhere, thanks to the fearful 
emergency. Eugenie, her young son, the luckless 'Prince 
Imperial, 1 and their adherents fled precipitantly to England. 
On the sixth, Jules Favre, the new foreign minister, could 
proclaim that "the revolution of September fourth had taken 
place without the shedding of a drop of blood or the loss of 
liberty to a single person." 

This new Government remained nominally in Paris during 
the ensuing siege, but a delegation from it left before the 
Prussians closed around, and undertook to rouse France 
against the invader. During the two weeks' interval between 
the revolution and the coming of the Prussians great energy 
was exerted to improve the defenses of the capital ; forts were 
strengthened, provisions rushed in, and useless mouths sent 
out. The city defended itself much longer than Moltke and 
Roon had estimated. The Republican leaders talked, indeed, 
of peace : — the Bonapartists had made the war : the new 
regime was not responsible for it. On the nineteenth of 
September Favre had an interview with Bismarck to see if 
the invasion could be stopped. The French might have paid 
an indemnity, but when the Germans demanded Alsace, 
Favre \s proud reply was, "Not an inch of our land, not a 
stone of our fortresses." After that there could only be war 
to the bitter end. 

The rest of the struggle, however, although it had many 
heroic chapters, could only have one outcome. The French 
were without a single field-army of trained and organized 



THE GREAT WAR 17 

troops wherewith to raise the siege of Paris, and within the 
city only a small proportion of the large garrison was made 
up of experienced men fit to be pitted against the Teutonic 
veterans. Nevertheless, for a few weeks there seemed a 
chance to save the city, for the Germans were now deep in a 
hostile land, with an extremely long line of communication. 

On October 7, Leon Gambetta escaped from Paris. It was 
before the days of aeroplanes, but he made use of a balloon 
and landed safely outside the hostile lines. During the siege 
sixty-four balloons are said to have left Paris, of which five 
were captured and two lost at sea. Three hundred and sixty- 
three carrier-pigeons were sent out, and fifty-seven came in. 
The Germans were on the alert to shoot the birds, but they 
did not get all of them. 

Gambetta was a man of abounding energy and extraordi- 
nary capacity for organization. In a short time his enthusi- 
asm was evoking large armies from central and southern 
France and was preparing to hurl them against the German 
lines around the capital. These new forces had bravery and 
patriotism, but they were composed of raw recruits hastily 
thrown together under inexperienced leaders. Still, they 
might have succeeded, had not Bazaine done his afflicted coun- 
try one last disservice. On October 27 he surrendered at 
Metz, with nearly one hundred and eighty thousand officers 
and men and about thirteen hundred and forty cannon. 
Assuredly he was terribly straitened for provisions, but since 
Sedan he had shown almost no initiative in trying to escape 
from his besiegers. Probably he had expected some kind of 
peace would be patched up, and that then his army would be 
released to restore the emperor to Paris. Certain it is that 
Bismarck duped him by pretended negotiations, spun along 
until supplies were at an end. But the French were never 
satisfied that Bazaine had resisted to the uttermost, or that 
he could not have held out a little longer, even if his men 
were almost starving. If it is sometimes the duty of a soldier 
to die for his country, he ought also sometimes to be willing 
to exist for it on pitifully short rations. Bazaine was con- 
demned after the war as a traitor, and although his life was 



18 THE KOOTS OF THE WAR 

spared and he escaped into Spain, he was to die in ignomini- 
ous exile, shunned like a kind of Benedict Arnold. Traitor, 
coward, or incompetent, his surrender in any case sealed the 
doom of France. The two hundred thousand odd Germans 
who had been employed in blockading Metz could now be 
hurried up to thwart the relief of Paris, and against such 
reinforcements Gambetta's improvised militia could only beat 
themselves in vain. 

The French won some minor successes, but they were never 
able to win a general battle or break the ring around Paris. 
For one hundred and thirty days the great city held out 
courageously, despite growing scarcity of food, while rats and 
cats were served in the boulevard restaurants and infants 
died for lack of milk. There were several brave sorties, but 
none penetrated the German lines far enough to get in touch 
with Gambetta's armies beyond. The Germans bombarded 
the city with heavy guns and wrought much damage, although 
not enough to force a surrender. The end came late in Janu- 
ary, when the last sortie had failed and there was no longer 
bread enough in Paris for even a scanty ration. The Govern- 
ment of National Defense had not been able to save the capital, 
but it had certainly saved French national honor. A winter 
of unparalleled severity had increased the demoralization of 
the new armies ; every attempt to get foreign alliances or inter- 
vention from England, Austria, Russia, or Italy, had met with 
polite refusals, and flesh and blood could hold out no longer. 

On January 28, Paris capitulated on condition that her 
garrison give itself up, — all save twelve thousand men re- 
tained to preserve order, — and that she pay a special war 
contribution of forty million dollars [two hundred million 
francs]. On the same day an armistice was arranged to allow 
the election of a French National Assembly to discuss terms of 
peace. 

These terms of peace the French well knew were likely to 
be very hard. Gambetta protested vainly against any truce 
and desired to continue the war, but the responsible generals 
told him the case was hopeless, and the French peasantry were 
unwilling to make further vain sacrifices. The newly elected 



THE GREAT WAR 19 

National Assembly met in February at Bordeaux, and on 
February 24, Louis Adolphe Thiers, the veteran Liberal states- 
man, whom the assembly had named as provisional v 'head of 
the executive power/' — they had not yet organized the new 
government — went to Versailles to get the best conditions he 
could from Bismarck. It was a pathetic and humiliating task 
— the representative of a proud and hitherto mighty nation 
forced to go to the triumphant foe and plead for mercy for 
his country. Thiers acquitted himself bravely and not with- 
out some success. 

Bismarck bluntly stated the required pound of flesh. He 
demanded a war indemnity of six billion francs — one billion 
two hundred million dollars — and the cession of part of Lor- 
raine, all of Alsace, and the fortress city of Belfort near the 
Franco-Swiss frontier. 

When her rulers foolishly rushed her into war, France, if 
victorious, no doubt had intended to demand the cession of 
lands in Rhenish Germany. This would have been a wrong, 
but the world has never acceded to the evil doctrine that two 
sets of wrongs create a status of right. Alsace-Lorraine 
had been a part of the debatable lands which had lain between 
Germany and France in the Middle Ages. They had cer- 
tainly once belonged to the Medieval Holy Roman Empire 
wherein Germany had been the main factor. But France had 
acquired Strassburg, the capital of Alsace, in 1681. She had, 
however, acquired Metz, the chief town in Lorraine, in 1552. 
The possession of these lands had been confirmed to France 
by the great European peace congress at Vienna in 1815, 
although that congress had been dominated by her victorious 
foes. As to mere historical claims of possession, there are 
surely limits to the right to assert them, or Holland might 
justly be claiming the State of New York, because she held 
the Hudson Valley up to 1664. A statute of international 
limitations must some time run out ; otherwise there would be 
no honest peace for the world. 

Germans admitted that the Alsatians were contented and 
civilized under French dominion. Their entire loyalty went 
to Paris and not to Berlin. They had supplied France with 



20 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

many of her most distinguished generals and statesmen. A I 
certain amount of mongrel German was spoken in their vil- 
lages, but this did not affect the sympathies of the region. If 
the question of annexation to Germany had been submitted \ 
to popular vote, the proposition would have been buried under 
an enormous adverse majority. 

Nevertheless, Prussia demanded Alsace-Lorraine. The 
country had been overrun by her armies. German sentiment 
demanded that as much of the old "Imperial Land" as possi- 
ble should be returned to the newly consolidated empire, and 
King William had just assumed the title of German Emperor. 
Strassburg in French hands always presented great strategic 
opportunities for an invasion of Baden and Wurtemberg, 
while Metz in German hands offered corresponding military 
chances for a great thrust into the heart of France. The 
wishes of the fifteen hundred thousand Alsace-Lorrainers, 
as cultivated, industrious, and honorable folk as existed in 
Europe, were the last thing the victors chose to consider. 

Nevertheless, Bismarck was too shrewd not to realize that 
it would be a serious matter to absorb into the new German 
Empire too many Frenchmen. Early in 1871 he talked of 
•taking only Alsace and Strassburg, but of leaving Metz to 
the vanquished, and of using a part of the indemnity to build 
a huge fortress a few miles back to cover the frontier. " I do 
not like so many Frenchmen being in our house against their 
will," he said. "The military men, however, will not be 
willing to let Metz slip, and perhaps they are right." Moltke, 
for his part, declared that the possession of Metz was worth 
one hundred thousand men at the opening of a campaign, and 
he easily talked over King William, — now also emperor — who 
was first and last a soldier rather than a statesman. 

In 1866, Bismarck had deliberately argued that easy terms 
must be granted to defeated Austria, because Austria would 
some day be valuable as a friend; but he showed no such 
merciful wisdom now in dealing with France. As for the 
indemnity, it seemed so huge a sum that the victors coldly 
calculated that the French would be economically crippled 



THE GREAT WAR 21 

for many decades in their effort to pay it, and consequently 
would be incapable of a blow for "revenge." 

In behalf of Alsace-Lorraine, Thiers exhausted all his re- 
sources; but he found the German leader hard as adamant. 
In the matter of the indemnity, however, he beat down the 
claim to five billion francs — one billion dollars, — thanks, possi- 
bly, to the aid of British influences which did not care to see 
the financial world demoralized by the bankruptcy of France. 
Also to save Belfort Thiers made a resolute stand. Belfort 
alone of all the great French fortresses had made a brave 
and successful defense. Its commandant had been no Ba- 
zaine. The Germans had been unable to capture it. Now 
when the Teutons demanded a city which was purely French 
and which had specially endeared itself to the hearts of all 
Frenchmen, Thiers turned desperately at bay. 

"These negotiations are nothing but a sham!" he cried. 
"Make war, then! Ravage our provinces, burn our houses, 
slaughter the inoffensive inhabitants, complete your work ! 
We will fight you to our last breath. We may be defeated, 
but at least we will not be dishonored. ' ' 

Bismarck was moved. He could not be sure if Thiers was 
in earnest, but he did know that the other nations in Europe 
were growing anxious at the sudden and tremendous growth of 
German power, and that if war were resumed, France might 
suddenly find a formidable friend. He retired to consult 
Emperor William and Moltke. On returning, he said that 
the French might retain Belfort, provided that Paris would 
consent to a triumphal march of the Prussians through her 
gates, something excluded by the original capitulation. This 
blow to French pride destroyed all the advantages of mag- 
nanimity, but Paris submitted to the parade of her enemies, 
and Belfort was saved. When, in 1914, this fortress became 
an invaluable bulwark against German invasion from Alsace, 
no doubt many Teutonic officers cursed the weakness of Bis- 
marck in allowing himself to be overborne by Thiers. 

So, by the final treaty — completed in detail at Frankfort, 
May 10, 1871 — France had to pay the enormous sum of one 



22 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

billion dollars and see a German army occupy her provinces 
until the debt was paid, and was also forcibly deprived of 
about five thousand square miles of territory, with one million 
five hundred thousand inhabitants. Vainly some thirty-five 
deputies of the doomed lands protested before the French Na- 
tional Assembly against this treaty which tore them away from 
France. "Alsace and Lorraine," they proclaimed, "refuse 
to be alienated; with one voice the citizens at their fire-sides, 
the soldiers under arms, the former by voting, the latter by 
fighting, proclaim to Germany and to the world at large their 
immutable will to remain French." But nothing could be 
done for them. France herself was helpless. England, Rus- 
sia, Italy, and Austria did not stir. The treaty was ratified. 
Thus ended the Franco-Prussian War, provoked by Bis- 
marck for his ulterior ends and precipitated by the incompe- 
tent statesmen of Napoleon III, the Germans' unconscious 
puppets. Its main consequences were four-fold. 

I. It certainly aided to hasten the unification of the German 
nation into the new empire. This, however, would have come 
to pass within a few years in any event. 

II. It weakened France, dethroned her as "first power in 
Europe," and put Germany in her place. 

III. It gave the rulers of the new Germany unbounded con- 
fidence in their military machine, and became a guiding pre- 
cedent for the unscrupulous but successful use of the same 
in wars provoked for aggrandizement. 

IV. It fixed a deep gulf of enmity between France and 
Germany, and by the creation of the never-ending "Alsace- 
Lorraine problem" made it impossible to bridge this chasm 
for forty-three years. 

To no small extent, therefore, the consequences of this war 
produced the greater war of 1914, in which, during 1917, the 
United States of America was engulfed despite its ardent love 
for peace. 

On January 5, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George, Prime-Minister 
of Great Britain, spoke of the need of "a reconsideration of 
the great wrong of 1871, when Alsace-Lorraine was torn 
away from them [the French], This sore has poisoned the 



THE GREAT WAR 23 

peace of Europe for half a century, and until it is cured, 
healthy conditions cannot be restored." 

Three days later President Wilson declared to the Ameri- 
can Congress that "the wrong done to France by Prussia 
in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine has unsettled the 
peace of the world for nearly fifty years." 



CHAPTER II 

BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 



IN 1871, when the treaty of Frankfort closed the Franco- 
Prussian War, the map of Europe presented almost the j 
same aspect as in July 1914, saving only the Balkan peninsula, 
where were to occur eventful changes. In the interval, in- 
deed, Norway was to secede peacefully from her union with 
Sweden under a common king ; and Luxemburg was to become 
an independent principality, no longer under the king of the 
Netherlands ; but these things were only locally important. 

In many respects not shown by the map, the world of 1871 
also presented "modern aspects" which made the transition 
to the twentieth century not very abrupt. The telegraph was \ 
in familiar existence, although not as yet the telephone. Gas- 
lights were in the cities, although electric-light so far was 
hardly practical. The nations already were covered by a 
considerable network of railways. Iron screw-steamships 
were plying the ocean, and the first cable was working to 
America. The recent war had been fought with breech-load- ! 
ing rifles on both sides, and the French had used a type of 
machine-gun, albeit imperfect and unsatisfactory. In the i 
scientific field Darwin was announcing his epoch-making | 
theories, and modern medicine was advancing to its great dis- 
coveries. It had achieved the use of anesthetics, although not 
yet that of antiseptics. Modern industrialism and commerce, 
also, were fairly embarked along those lines of development 
which they were to follow down to 1914. 

In political life most of the monarchs of Europe had re- 
luctantly concluded that constitutions, or similar charters of 
liberties, were unavoidable perquisites of their subjects, and, 
outside of Russia and Turkey, there were at least the forms of 
law-making parliaments, popular elections, and political agita- 

24 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 25 

tion. There were already some people who were classified as 
socialists, and these were making an organized attack on the 
privileges of capital and property. The old battle for reli- 
gious toleration had been won almost everywhere, save in 
Russia; and Catholics, Protestants, and Jews were usually 
equal before the law, although often subject to local stigma 
and social persecution. 

The forty-three years which followed, therefore, were not 
marked in the majority of nations by those bloody struggles 
for liberty, political or religious, which have made up the his- 
tory of past ages. As for the claims of socialism and its de- 
mand for a new order in society, however vigorous its growth 
during this time, it did not result in any wars or successful 
revolutions. Thus in many respects the entire period from 
1871 to 1914 lacks the dramatic events and the spectacular 
heroisms which bulk so large in human annals. 

Nevertheless, this whole period was one of the most signifi- 
cant and, it is fair to say, most decisively important in the 
whole history of mankind. It was the era during which the 
great peoples of Europe, most of whom had been in a process 
of consolidation and violent flux since at least 18-48, found 
themselves as nations, solved many of their local problems, 
suppressed their internal woes and enmities, grew rich and 
strong and self-confident, and began to look outward. This 
whole process of looking outward brought them into constant 
contact, — a contact often jealous and unfriendly, — with their 
equally forward-thrusting neighbors. For a time, however, 
the resources of diplomacy sufficed to bridge over the diffi- 
culties. No great general war resulted. There were almost 
annual threats and "crises," but no actual appeal to the can- 
non. Men accounted wise and honest assured the world that, 
thanks to the growing spirit of brotherhood and humanity 
among all peoples, the scientific demonstrations of the folly 
of war, the absence of many of the causes of quarrel which had 
formerly set nations by the ears, and the development of the 
use of courts of arbitration and "peace tribunals" for solving 
international troubles, a great European war would never 
come. This confidence grew, rather than diminished, despite 



26 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

sundry ominous warnings from passing events, down to the 
last days of July, 1914. 

And then, suddenly, "the windows of heaven were opened" 
to pour down not rain, but a deluge of blood. M ankind awoke 
from its infatuation to discover that all the time it had been 
merrily trading, traveling, manufacturing, conducting scien- 
tific investigations, or agitating schemes for social betterment, 
another set of forces — whose serious existence it had often 
ignored, or even denied — had been making all things ready 
for a carnival of death and devastation such as had not been 
since intelligent beings walked this planet. 

Between 1871 and 1914 there had been slowly collected for 
action a quantity of international explosives of terrific power. 
Year by year this fearful magazine grew larger. Year by 
year the interlocking of human interests made it more certain 
that very obscure deeds and occasions could produce terrible 
results. Year by year new scientific inventions also made it 
certain that the great war — when it came — would be unpree- 
edently devilish and would almost unavoidably involve in- 
nocent and neutral peoples. 1 Down to the end, however, the 
falsely optimistic pacifist prophets continued their cry of 
"Peace, peace!" where there was to be no peace. Then came 
twelve days of acute stress and agony, from the presentation 
of the fateful Serbian note by Austria to the final declaration 
of war upon Germany by Great Britain, and at length the 
world realized that it had been living in a fools' paradise. 

Many things which a few years ago were very obscure, or 
which could not be spoken of bluntly, are quite clear now and 
demand plain speaking. To tell the whole story of the dec- ! 
ades before 1914, however, it will be needful to wait many 
years, — till private memoirs have been written and confi- 
dential state papers are published. Nevertheless, the great 

i Before the days of aeroplanes and Zeppelins it would have been 
impossible to kill women and children in towns hundreds of miles from 
the war zone. Before the invention of submarines it would have been 
almost impossible, even for a government as reckless as that of Ger- 
many in 1914-17, to indulge in a naval policy which could work such 
bloody havoc to neutrals as to make the offending country an outlaw 
among the nations. 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 27 

facts stand out unmistakably. Curious points will be cleared 
up later ; minor errors will be corrected ; but the main chapters 
can be accurately written. 

In 1871 there were, as to-day, six great powers in Europe — 
Great Britain, France, Germany (the successor to victorious 
Prussia), Russia, Austria, and Italy. The last named was the 
smallest, weakest, and newest claimant for major honors. Her 
position remained somewhat equivocal. Outside of Europe 
there seemed to be no formidable nations. The United States 
of America was recognized as a huge body of people who had 
succeeded in preserving their unity after the great Civil War. 
It seemed an utterly remote country, however, with many 
curious problems which few Europeans understood; its navy 
was small and its army still smaller. Americans took even 
less interest in European affairs than Europeans did in Amer- 
ican problems. Europe also was too busy with her own 
troubles just then to care to consider whether the Monroe 
Doctrine was worth violating. 1 That America should 'actually 
intervene in Old World problems and diplomatic conferences 
seemed about the least probable thing imaginable. 

As for what is now the eighth great power in the world, 
Japan, she was barely emerging from the chrysalis of isola- 
tion that had imprisoned her for centuries, and she was just 
beginning to cultivate relations with the Western World. A 
serious war between the Mikado and his feudal dynasts had 
been racking her. Japan was regarded in Europe as a second 
China, only smaller and even less formidable. 

One great capital event was startling the world in 1871 — the 
dethronement of France as " first power" in Continental Eu- 
rope. No nation in modern times ever had so fearful and sud- 
den a humiliation as that which had come to France in the 
Metz-Sedan campaign. For nearly two hundred years Eng- 
land had, indeed, been mistress of the seas. Her commerce 
and colonies had grown apace. But for over two hundred 
years France had been the center of the military, social, and 

i Napoleon Ill's experiment in Mexico (1863-67) had been a disas- 
trous failure and a clear warning against similar adventures. 



28 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

diplomatic life of Europe. She had not succeeded in defeat- 
ing England upon the ocean, partly at least because so much 
of her energies had been consumed upon land ; but as a witty 
Parisian had said, ' ' Though England may blockade Havre, the 
Paris boulevards will remain very pleasant just the same. ' ' 

Frenchmen liked to call themselves citizens of "the Grand 
Nation." They could repeat with seeming justice the old 
boast of their kings: "The ruler of France without allies can 
go to war with whomsoever he will ; but the greatest king else- 
where dare not go to war with France, except he have many 
allies. " France had been beaten in great wars. Louis XIV 
had been defeated ; Napoleon I had been defeated. But these 
defeats were compliments to the greatness of France. Prac- 
tically all Europe had been obliged in each case to unite 
against her to prevent her from conquering the wide con- 
tinent, and even after her defeat she had been left with suffi- 
cient power and prestige to make her neighbors shiver at the 
threat of her anger. Under Napoleon III, vain "man of 
destiny" as he proved to be, the old prestige of the nation 
seemed to have returned. His armies had defeated the Rus- 
sians in the Crimean War and the Austrians in the War for 
the Liberation of Italy. The axis of European life seemed to 
revolve in Paris. "France is happy," Napoleon III had 
arrogantly asserted in 1851, "Europe may live in peace." 
The French language, French ideas, French books, French 
manners, French clothes, and French products went every- 
where — to the Levant, to the heart of Russia, to South Amer- 
ica, to almost every land not strictly dominated by Anglo- 
Saxons, and when the phrase "European civilization" was 
used, the speaker, whatever his nationality, probably uncon- 
sciously thought of the types and examples of Paris. 

Now all was changed in a twinkling. France was not 
merely defeated in battle. The fearfulness of her disaster 
seemed to imply that her whole culture and attitude toward 
life was bad. The world assumed that no nation could un- 
dergo so terrible a catastrophe and not be rotten to the core. 
Men dwelt on certain undoubted defects in the French char- 
acter and exaggerated the glittering vices that had been 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 29 

purveyed to foreign visitors in Paris ; while in such nations as 
Russia, and England, both of which had formerly dreaded 
French rivalry or invasion, there was ill-concealed satisfaction 
at her downfall. France was no longer the greatest power in 
Europe. She was, at best, only a second-class power. There 
were plenty to argue that she was not a power at all, but a 
decadent, dwindling nation, now in the evening of her history 
and without the hope of a national dawn. 

All that France lost by the war of 1870-71, Germany gained. 
And more, too. She was now undoubtedly the "first power" 
on the Continent. "Europe," it was wittily said, "had lost a 
mistress and gained a master." The perfection of Moltke's 
war machine was such that no military nation would have 
ventured to measure strength with it, unless supported by 
several formidable allies. But an alliance against Germany 
seemed one of the last things probable. Italy was still a 
decidedly weak and unconsolidated nation. Austria had not 
actually forgotten how Prussia had defeated her in 1866 ; but 
Bismarck had taken good care not to humiliate her in the 
treaty of that year, and he was already making it plain that 
if the Vienna government would only let German affairs alone 
and turn its face toward the Balkans, it would meet with no 
hostility, but probably with decided helpfulness from its 
neighbor at Berlin. 

Russia was extremely friendly to Germany. In 1870 the 
Czar had virtually served notice on Austria that if the latter 
came to the rescue of France, Russia would balance matters by 
aiding Prussia. In return for this, Bismarck had aided the 
Czar to set aside the old treaty of 1856, which bound him not 
to keep warships on the Black Sea. This proceeding made 
England scowl and grumble, but she did not prepare to fight. 

With England Bismarck's relations were, indeed, somewhat 
cold. He was on bad personal terms with the Crown Princess 
Frederick (wife of the later Emperor Frederick) who, as eldest 
daughter of Queen Victoria, was accused of conducting a kind 
of pro-English propaganda at the Berlin court. But England 
was, on the whole, decidedly friendly to the new order of 
things in Europe. She had disliked and distrusted Napoleon 



30 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

III. Prussia had seemed, perhaps, rather too drastic in her 
penalizing of France, but it was hard to arouse much sym- 
pathy for a nation which Englishmen had been taught to 
glory over — with due memories of Agincourt, Trafalgar, and 
Waterloo — and to regard as their "natural enemy." 

Germany also had another great asset in English eyes. She 
was not a naval power. France had always possessed a lieet 
strong enough to give the British Admiralty serious anxiety. 
Germany had only a few coast-defense iron-clads and gun- 
boats. She had no colonies, and her merchant marine was 
small. Englishmen did not worry because threats from Ber- 
lin caused consternation in Paris and Vienna. Moltke's 
legions could not fly across or swim the Channel. The aver- 
age Briton probably would have indorsed Thomas Carlyle's 
view "that Germany is to stand on her feet henceforth, and 
not be dismembered on the highway, but face all manner of 
Napoleons and hungry, springing dogs, with clear steel and 
honest purpose in her heart, — this seems to me the best news 
we or Europe has had for the last forty years or more." 1 

Germany therefore could confront the future without great 
fear of her neighbors. France was helpless. Italy seemed 
weak and not unfriendly. Austria was forgetting her old 
grudges. Czar Alexander II and Kaiser William I were 
warm personal friends. England looked on benevolently 
while Germany made progress. And so all the great powers 
were accounted for. 

The military success of Germany, of course, enabled her 
genius to find an outlet in hundreds of peaceful ways. The 
moral rebound from her victory promptly stimulated her 
universities, her laboratories, and her printing presses. The 
wealth which was to pour in upon her from the great indem- 
nity coming out of France gave her financiers and manufac- 
turers for the first time the opportunity to undertake huge 
commercial and industrial enterprises such as had hitherto 
centered mainly in England. 

The deeds of the German armies made all the world take 

i Carlyle actually said this in 1866, after the defeat of Austria, but it 
remained good for the British attitude in 1870-71. 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OP 1871 31 

notice of those less martial deeds of the preceding century 
which had shown how versatile were the national capacities. 
As has been well said, "during the last hundred years the 
Germans had gained fresh distinction in many fields of na- 
tional endeavor. German literature could show names which 
rivalled any in the literature of England or France ; German 
music had surpassed the glory of the Italian; German phi- 
losophy, with its cluster of celebrities of the first rank, had not 
been equalled since the days of Greece; German science had 
already come to be regarded as second to none ; German uni- 
versities, as the models of learning and advanced thought, 
were attracting students from all over the civilized world." 1 
There is no prompter advertisement for a nation, however, 
than that of a military triumph. For the next thirty years all 
mankind seemed going to school in Germany. The excellence 
of her science, philosophy, educational, business, and prac- 
tical efficiency systems made people lose interest in other 
questions, such as whether her political institutions were keep- 
ing pace with the remaining sides of her progress and whether 
the unscrupulous spirit which had provoked three wars in be- 
half of German unity might not some day provoke another 
war in behalf of German imperialism and arrogant expansion. 
So long as the empire, however, remained under the control of 
its founder, there was relatively little danger of its launching 
on a policy of raw aggrandizement. Bismarck in 1871 looked 
on the new German Federation as a structure altogether too 
young and uncertain to be subject to fresh risks and chances. 
Practical in all things, he knew how to draw the wise line be- 
tween boldness and rashness. He believed that Germany now 
had territories enough, and that any new annexations would 
mean danger. He did not see any necessity for imitating 
England and seeking colonies. He looked on a fleet as a use- 
less expense and luxury, more likely to involve the nation in 
trouble than to defend its interest. He dreaded the lasting 
anger of France, and believed that after Sedan and Alsace- 
Lorraine it was useless to expect that Berlin and Paris could 
preserve more than official friendship. But France, fighting 

i Coolidge, "Origins of the Triple Alliance," p. 23. 



32 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

alone, seemed now too crippled to constitute a serious danger. 
Bismarck therefore did his best to patch up old feuds with 
Austria, and particularly tried not to anger either England 
or Russia. Unless one of these two powers joined with 
France, Germany seemed safe; and the standing difficulties 
France had with England and Russia seemed to make the 
Iron Chancellor's task easy. So long as France was isolated, 
Germany was secure; so long as Germany was secure, Bis- 
marck was an ardent lover of peace. 

All Europe recognized the commanding position and the 
great personal genius of Bismarck, even while his foes cursed 
the checkmate he gave to their policies. Not since Napoleon I 
has any other man ever cast his shadow so impressively over 
nations not his own. Here is a fair sketch of his character: 
''His dominant personality, his gift of caustic expression, his 
apparent frankness, nay, the very brutality of his utterances, 
fascinated and subjugated those with whom he came in con- 
tact. Born for strife, he passionately resented opposition, and 
was a good hater who seldom forgot an injury. He was in- 
finitely resourceful in detail, keeping open various possibil- 
ities and ready to change on the instant, if need be, from one 
cause of action to another, and constantly bewildering his 
opponents; but at bottom his aims and ambitions were not 
complicated." 1 As has been said, his object now was to 
strengthen Germany and to put her in a position to weather 
future storms. 

Bismarck was now chancellor of the new German Empire. 
Nominally, he was merely the agent and mouth-piece of his 
sovereign, Emperor William I. But that worthy old gentle- 
man was not a person of sufficiently acute intelligence and 
strength of character to hold his own against the demands of 
the redoubtable minister, to whom, as he understood well 
enough, he owed his imperial throne and his glory. Also, in 
fairness be it said, the personal relations of the two men were 
those of intimate and sincere friendship. Bismarck was 
therefore really an autocrat. He had been the opponent of 
liberal and parliamentary institutions in his youth, and he 

iCoolidge; Ibid, p. 27. 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 33 

made only the most grudging concessions to the spirit of liber- 
alism in his later days. To him the test of government was 
prompt efficiency, and prompt efficiency seemed to him to come 
best in a hereditary monarchy, where the monarch was wise 
enough to intrust all his vast power to a few energetic, capable 
ministers, or, better still, to a single arch-minister (such as 
Otto von Bismarck!) who would provide for the public good 
out of the plenitude of his wisdom, unhampered by sordid 
political considerations and the tug of parties. 

Bismarck could not quite dispense with parliamentary 
forms ; but he accepted their machinery and limitations just as 
hesitantly as possible. Government, for him, was to be 
prompt, severe, impersonal, scientific, and therefore efficient. 
He would willingly have indorsed the adage of the eighteenth 
century despots, "everything for the people; nothing by the 
people." There is no evidence, I believe, that he ever read 
Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," but undoubtedly he would 
have declared, if candid, that its ideals of popular sovereignty 
"of the people, by the people, for the people" was disproved 
by all historic experience, and threatened extreme disaster for 
the government which followed and tested it. 

Bismarck's political methods and ideas became a standard 
for the rulers of Prussia and Germany long after his death in 
1898. Their fruition came in July, 1914, when a small body 
of real or alleged military and diplomatic "experts," sitting 
around the imperial council table at Potsdam, hurried the 
German Empire into war without giving the nation one fair 
chance to consider the necessity thereof, and when the well- 
disciplined German people, on its part, enthusiastically ac- 
cepted the fearful decision which its lauded and trusted ex- 
perts had made for it. 

In short, the following statement can fairly stand in his- 
tory: — Between 1871 and 1914 the democratic ideal and its 
applied political methods made rapid progress in almost every 
civilized land save in Germany; but in Germany, as will be 
explained later, autocracy and privilege seemed to be making 
a successful stand. Nay more, by their very efficiency, by the 
wealth, glory, and creature comforts, and by the glittering 



34 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

hopes extended for the national future, hopes which they pre- 
sented to the people they dominated, the Prussian militarists 
and officials seemed to give the lie to the claims of democracy. 
If their "intelligent monarchy," with its powerful sovereign, 
officer caste, and its tentacles of civil officialdom, was to prove 
a lasting success, there would be a setback for democracy 
throughout the entire world, for democracy would have to be 
branded as incapable of governing the most formidable, in- 
tellectual, and progressive nation of Europe. For this re- 
newed lease of life to monarchism and the things that go with 
it, the foes of democracy must undoubtedly thank the genius 
of Otto von Bismarck. 

In 1871 Bismarck had achieved no small success as a civil 
administrator, however rough his methods. He had put down 
the demands of the Prussian Liberals for a "responsible" 
government, dependent not upon the will of the prince, but 
upon a parliamentary majority. He had secured national 
unity and military glory in a manner that silenced his erst- 
while critics and made it impossible for liberalism to get 
enough hearing in the empire to resume a successful political 
campaign. 

But Bismarck's main triumphs had really been as a dip- 
lomat, as a master-player upon the fears, interests, and per- 
sonal frailties of the rulers of other nations. Indeed, except 
for his success as a diplomat, he could never have won that 
prestige for the Prussian throne which saved its domestic 
power. Bismarck took the international world as he found it, 
used its methods, and, it must be said, did nothing to improve 
them. He did not believe in "pitiless publicity," in general 
arbitration treaties, or in allowing any kind of popular 
opinion, much less popular clamor, to mold the policies which 
he conceived (out of his superior wisdom) to be for the inter- 
est of the Prussian State. When he actually made a treaty, he 
executed it faithfully, 1 though by no means overliberally ; but 

i It is impossible to believe that Bismarck could not have realized 
how the violation of Belgium would have produced consequences out- 
weighing almost any resulting military gains, and would have pre- 
vented the German staff from taking the action it did in 1914. He was 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OP 1871 35 

when he made a less formal private agreement, his perform- 
1 ance thereof often made the statesmen opposed to him curse 
I themselves as his dupes, misled by glozing words and half- 
promises. His methods were those of the private cabinet 
and cipher-correspondence. He used innumerable "private- 
agents ' ' and downright spies in the foreign capitals, and often 
the accredited ambassadors of Prussia were ignorant of their 
master's real policy and were allowed to make statements and 
engage in actions which Bismarck himself could promptly 
repudiate, if such a turn pleased him. Thus, in 1870 the 
Prussian Ambassador at Paris ingenuously worked for peace 
with Napoleon III, at the very moment that his superior was 
pulling every wire in order to bring about war. 

In private life the chancellor was undoubtedly a man of 
keen personal honor and was not without most of the tokens of 
a high-minded gentleman, but in behalf of prince and father- 
land he often selected curious standards. Sometimes his 
duplicity was so brazen as to have caused the ruin of any 
diplomat less astute and without a formidable military state 
behind him to make cross-examination perilous. Thus, in 
1871 he met the Austrian statesman Beust and disclaimed to 
him any intention of trying to acquire the German-speaking 
provinces of Austria. "I would rather," asserted the chan- 
cellor, "annex Holland to Germany." A little later, how- 
ever, Beust went to London as ambassador for his government. 
Here he met the new Dutch envoy, an old diplomatic friend, 
who had earlier been accredited to Berlin. "The first thing 
he told me," recounts Beust in his memoirs, "was that Bis- 
marck had reassured him as to the rumor that Germany 
wished to annex Holland, by saying that he (Bismarck) would 
greatly prefer to annex the German provinces of Austria. ' ' 1 
Such methods appear so outrageous as to be likely to produce 
their own punishment. But Bismarck had many factors in 
his favor. In the first place, Napoleon III, the ruler whom he 

unscrupulous, but not blind to the practical disadvantages of immorality 
in many cases. 

iCoolidge; "Origins of the Triple Alliance," p. 31, note quoting 
Beust's memoirs. 



36 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

befooled the most, met so utter a downfall that he could never 
take vengeance. In the next place, the mighty Teuton did not 
overdo the game of duplicity. Very frequently he bluntly 
spoke the truth, threw all finesse to the winds, and went 
straight to the point of his desires. It was far more dangerous 
to assume that he was lying than that he was sincere. In the 
third place, oblique methods in diplomacy were no monopoly 
of his. They had been inherited from the long line of red- or 
purple-robed prevaricators, whereof the leaders had been such 
Olympians as Richelieu, Frederick the Great, and (more re- 
cently) the Austrian Metternich. Diplomacy, the game of 
kings, with cities as pawns and provinces as the greater pieces, 
had long been reckoned a refined combat of wits in which the 
least guileful was the surest loser. All must be done dexter- 
ously, smoothly, politely, remembering well that the penalty 
for loss of temper at a detected intrigue or falsehood might 
well be a very disastrous war. You lied to your neighbor be- 
cause he was presumably lying to you ; and Bismarck had 
probably a much cleaner record in these matters than many of 
the hopelessly mediocre French, Austrian, and Russian diplo- 
mats with whom he contended. 

Theoretically, the standards of European diplomacy were 
more honorable in 1871 than they had been, let us say, a hun- 
dred years earlier. Honesty was being recognized as usually 
the best policy. "Wars were becoming so terrible that they 
were not entered upon save for some presentable public end. 
But while, even in Prussia and Russia, governments had come 
to hesitate over imposing a new tax or a new civil reform, 
without at least taking public opinion into account ; and while 
in most other lands any internal change was impossible with- 
out free public discussion and legislation in a parliament ; yet 
diplomacy, i. e., the settling of questions of peace and war and 
matters touching the lives and happiness of millions, usually 
was handled by a small cabinet of ministers, if not by only one 
minister alone with his prince. And if there was a parlia- 
ment, it was only convened to give perfunctory assent to an 
accomplished fact, or perhaps to vote the money-credits for a 
war already declared. 



BISMARCK AND THE EUROPE OF 1871 37 

Diplomacy, in short, had not become democratized to any- 
large extent. It still continued suave, private, and often im- 
moral. In the name of the public weal, things innumerable 
could be done behind the curtain, and a clever writer has thus 
parodied the diplomatic records of days, alas, not too far de- 
parted. He makes a hypothetical ambassador report: "His 
Excellency, the foreign minister, received me with the utter- 
most cordiality. He assured me that his Government had 
sent no letter to the 'Panjandrum' and had never entertained 
the idea of sending any. As I had myself read the letter 
which His Excellency had sent, I thought it best to express the 
uttermost gratification at his Excellency's assurance, and said 
that my Government had been guided by the same principles. 
I do not think he detected my knowledge, or suspected that 
/ had written to the 'Panjandrum' first!" 1 

France, Russia, Austria, England, as well as Germany, had 
been doing these things for centuries. But the world was get- 
ting sick of such methods. They were no longer proving abso- 
lutely necessary to success. Cavour, the great Italian, seems 
to have been able to unite his country territorially, without 
making public and personal honor pitifully separate. Other 
leaders in other lands were trying to uphold better standards. 
But Bismarck preferred, on the whole, the old way, a way 
which was to become increasingly revolting to men of the 
twentieth century. The "secret service fund," the elaborate 
spy-system, the corrupted foreign official, the intercepted 
mail-packet, the confidential half-promise and understanding 
— these he did not despise. He used them successfully. His 
lieutenants, who grew into his power, used them. Their 
standards were not changed. At last came the catastrophe 
of 1914. 

To sum up, then, the achievements of Bismarck. He con- 
summated the federation of all the German states (minus the 
Austrian lands) into one empire; he made that empire the 
most formidable power in Europe ; he put the German people 
in a position to give free rein to their remarkable abilities for 

i Murray; "Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey," p. 42. 



38 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

intellectual, scientific, and commercial conquests; but he did 
not give them a free government; and he did not introduce 
into diplomacy any new ideals corresponding with the world 's 
developments in science, personal ethics, and humanity. He 
used the old tools of statecraft, now becoming rusty in other 
hands, and he gave them new credit by wielding them with 
incomparable skill. The Germans did well to honor him as a 
supremely great man; but they did grievously ill not to recog- 
nize how much of clay was mingled with his iron. 



CHAPTER III 

THE NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 

HAVING conquered his main foes, Bismarck desired for 
the remainder of his career to preserve the public peace. 1 
This, as already explained, was not so difficult a task as it be- 
came after his death. In 1871 almost all the great powers of 
Europe were winding up a series of experiments in the way of 
internal reforms or changes, and until the results of those 
changes were evident, none of them was very anxious to seek 
trouble by schemes against its neighbors. In the Balkans, to 
be sure, the extreme feebleness of the Turkish Empire and the 
oppression of the Christian populations therein by their Mos- 
lem masters were creating a problem which gave intense in- 
terest, especially to Russia, England, and Austria. But in the 
main, international conditions after 1871 were fairly static. 

To understand these conditions in Europe it is needful, 
therefore, to say something about these internal problems, be- 
cause even if a story deals primarily with wars and diplo- 
macy, the interior politics of a nation often react seriously 
upon its whole attitude toward a foreign question. Fear of 
an economic setback has kept many a country at peace when 
its hotheads have cried for war, and there is also ample room 
for the contention that finally, in 1914, the German ruling 
classes desired war, to a large extent because the pressure for 
liberal reforms (especially in favor of the hated socialists) 
was becoming so serious that it could not well be resisted, un- 
less all domestic questions were dropped from sight amid the 
uproar of a great international conflict. 

In 1871 the six great powers had each a set of internal prob- 
lems sufficiently serious to tax the best energies of their re- 
spective statesmen. Two of these nations — France and Ger- 

i Whether, by exception, he desired war with France in 1875 will be 
taken up elsewhere. 

39 



40 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

many — had such important questions to solve that they are 
best handled in separate chapters, but an explanation may be 
made of the status in which each of the other four nations 
found themselves. 

By far the greatest power in Europe outside of Germany 
and possibly including Germany, was Great Britain. Her 
army was small and sent no tremors through the war depart- 
ment at Berlin, but Bismarck, though he disliked the English, 
never committed the folly of despising them. His relations 
with England, though sometimes cold, were always correct, 
and usually they were outwardly friendly. England, he real- 
ized, by her fleet could blockade any coast ; by her wealth she 
could finance many poorer powers with large armies; and by 
her vast network of commercial and economic interests she 
could exert her influence all over the globe. Thus he saw she 
was a nation which it would be folly to provoke without the 
gravest possible cause. 

England had possibly reached the zenith of her career in 
1815, but she had hardly declined. No European power pre- 
tended to rival her navy, and it was long before there was 
serious rivalry to her merchant marine, her commerce, and her 
manufactures. In the sixties the American Civil War and the 
substitution of steel for wooden vessels had enabled her to 
escape from the competition of American shipping which for a 
while had been becoming formidable. Her colonial empire 
did not cover as much of Africa as it does to-day; but she 
already held in her grasp India, Canada, Australia, and in- 
numerable isles. Resting secure behind her " oaken walls" 
(now, with the change in ship-building, becoming no less for- 
midable "walls of steel"), she had been able to keep clear of 
most of the rivalries and wars of the Continent. She entered 
into no permanent alliances. She threw her mighty influence 
usually on the side of peace, and always on the side of that 
party which was striving to preserve the status quo and to pre- 
vent the alteration of the "balance of power," — in other 
words, the sudden uprising of some Continental Empire which 
would overshadow all others and ultimately become a menace 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 41 

to England. Since Bismarck had put a happy stop to French 
schemes against Britain, and himself seemed quite content 
with the gains of 1871, England reciprocated his desire for 
friendly relations, although by no means indorsing all his 
deeds and methods. 

In 1871 England most decidedly was not looking beyond 
herself, but was concerned with internal questions. Her con- 
stitution and institutions were entering upon a new period of 
growth and peaceful development. In 1867 she had adopted 
a new system of choosing members of Parliament, by which 
the vote was open not merely to the middle, but also to the 
great industrial working classes. This change was bound to 
undermine the former control of English politics by the no- 
bility and high-bred gentlemen, and to put the country grad- 
ually upon a democratic basis, with the king more than ever 
allowed ' ; to reign, but not to govern." However, the man- 
agement of English policy was still mainly in the hands of men 
with genealogies, who wore long black coats and who could 
quote university Latin. It was clear, nevertheless, that the 
old order was passing. In 1868 Mr. Gladstone became prime 
minister and remained in office until 1874. To him and to his 
fellow Liberals aggressive war and an ambitious foreign 
policy was one of the last things possible. They were not 
ultra pacifists, but they were so intent upon a long program 
of internal reforms — for the benefit of the working classes, 
for the relief of the undoubted woes of Ireland, for the ter- 
mination of some of the absurdities still retained by the 
established Church of England — that they restricted their 
foreign interests to a minimum. The great colonial empire 
was an inconvenience, something possibly to be gotten rid of. 
"Little Englanders," so their Conservative foes sarcastically 
called them. And whatever their faults, certainly a willing- 
ness to rush the British nation into war was not to be reckoned 
among them. They allowed France to be crushed in 1871 and 
never raised a finger ; and they had no pet projects in foreign 
parts which awakened the anxiety of Continental statesmen. 

In 1871 England seemed a mighty power, yet more than 
ever she appeared to be in the European system, but not of it, 



42 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Thanks to this detached position behind ' ' the inviolate sea, ' ' 
Englishmen boasted that they had no need for the great con- 
script armies which all the Continental nations were adopting 
in imitation of Germany. The British army was made up of 
professional soldiers. The officers were usually younger sons 
of the nobility and gentry, who entered the army as a career 
in lieu of the church or the law. The rank and tile came from 
such of the lower classes as had been unsuccessful or were 
dissatisfied in civil life. The average enlistment was long, 
and the army was never part of the nation, as in France or 
Germany. The British army was reputed very brave, and 
had won many victories over African and Asiatic barbarians, 
but critics claimed that its valor was more heroic than scien- 
tific. In the Crimean War (1853-56) it had not seemed on the 
whole to have fought so well as its French allies. That 
Britain was a purely naval power, and could not be expected 
to make a formidable diversion in a European land war, was 
something regarded as almost axiomatic down to 1914, and 
this fact entered into all the calculations of Continental states- 
men, much as they dreaded England's wealth and navy. 

If England was the richest, most sedate, and secure of the 
great European states, Italy was the poorest, most recently 
consolidated, and most uncertain as to her future. 

Until 1859 Italy had been only a mass of petty principal- 
ities and kingdoms, backward, despot-ridden, poverty-stricken, 
and very unhappy. "Italy is merely a geographical expres- 
sion," Metternich, the one-time prime minister of Austria, is 
said to have remarked. In 1859-61, however, thanks to the 
genius of Cavour, the great minister of Victor Emmanuel, king 
of Sardinia-Piedmont, and to the intervention of the French 
armies of Napoleon III, Austrian influence had been largely 
destroyed in the peninsula, and the process of territorial uni- 
fication had been completed by the winning of Venetia in 1866 
and of Rome in 1870. 

The domestic problems of this new great power are treated 
elsewhere. They were sore enough to give the statesmen of 
the reigning house of Savoy scope for all their energies, with- 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 43 

out looking beyond their borders. Nevertheless, after the first 
years of reconstruction Italy began to discover that she had 
hopes and policies that took her beyond her boundaries of 
1870. These ambitions were somewhat three-fold: 

I. The problem of Italia Irredenta (Unredeemed Italy), 
w T hich concerned the Italian-speaking lands at or near the 
head of the Adriatic. Here there was a great question which 
in 1915 was to set the nation again on fire, but its details are 
discussed in another place. 

II. Across the Mediterranean, in North Africa, France had 
already annexed Algeria and was making a fair beginning 
toward a vast colonial empire. Italians, however, were even 
then casting longing eyes on Tunis (directly opposite Sicily), 
and on Tripoli, which lay more to the east. In ancient days 
the Mediterranean had been an Italian lake. Might it not be 
so again? The Italians were too weak and undeveloped at 
first, nevertheless, to prevent France from seizing Tunis. 
Much later, however, they were themselves to stir up the diplo- 
mats by their seizure of Tripoli, one of the main acts in the 
drama directly preliminary to the outbreak of the Great War. 

III. In addition to North Africa, the Italians presently 
discovered an interest in a country nearer home. Directly 
across the Adriatic lay Albania, a misruled province of the 
crumbling Turkish Empire. If Italy held the ports of Al- 
bania, she would control the exits to the Adriatic, a position 
of enormous strategic advantage. So long as "Turkey in 
Europe' ' retained its grip on Albania, Italy did not stir, but 
her interest therein was long known. When, in 1912, during 
the first Balkan War, the Turk was obliged to turn Albania 
loose, the Italian interest therein was instantly manifest ; and 
it was partly through fear lest Austria gain control of the 
Adriatic that Italy entered the Great War in 1915. 

In 1871, however, the main concern of Italy was to keep 
herself together. Besides the clerical opposition, her leaders 
faced numerous agitators for a socialistic republic and gangs 
of downright revolutionists with hankerings for anarchy. 
The extreme poverty of the country made an ambitious for- 
eign policy almost impossible, and German military critics 



44 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

sneered cynically at the alleged fighting qualities of the Italian 
army. Nevertheless, for the sake of national prestige, Victor 
Emmanuel's ministers claimed for their country the honors 
and prerogatives of a Great Power, and her neighbors were 
compelled rather grudgingly to make room for her. 

Between 1871 and 1914 Italy was to grow steadily in in- 
ternal strength and international consideration. Very possi- 
bly it was her refusal in 1914 to side with Germany, and her 
decision in 1915 to fight against her, which largely determined 
the later tendencies of the Great War. 

The old foe and present neighbor of Italy was the Austro- 
Hungarian monarchy, or more popularly Austria. 1 

Austria was not a nation ; it was a conglomerate of peoples 
under the Hapsburg dynasty. That it existed for centuries, 
and even expanded its bulk sometimes, was due to an amazing 
amount of good luck, eked out frequently by the great personal 
abilities of its rulers. Down to 1804 the rulers of the diver- 
gent "Austrian lands" had usually claimed leadership in the 
shadowy Holy Roman Empire, which was merely a loose con- 
federation of the states of Germany. They had actually 
called themselves "Caesars" and "Roman Emperors," as if 
heirs of Charlemagne and Augustus. This absurdity had 
gone on for centuries. But the Holy Roman Empire, which 
long before its dissolution had become a pitiful pretence to 
greatness, had finally evaporated amid the cannon smoke 
of Napoleon I. The ruler of Vienna dropped the pretentious 
title and took the sounder one of Emperor of Austria, based 
on the ample lands he held in his own right. 

To state all the countries over which the Hapsburg kaisers 
claimed personal lordship was a geographical exercise. Some 
of the lands had been gained by conquest, some by marriage 
treaties, and some by recovery from the Turks of Christian 
territories where the infidels had destroyed the native dynas- 
ties. 2 Each district had its own institutions, nobility, privi- 

i Austria will be ordinarily used hereafter as the convenient name 
for this government, including that of Hungary. 

- This was the main basis for Austrian claims to Hungary. 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 45 

leges, and often its own special race and language. Even if 
loyal to the person of the emperor, the various nationalities 
hated nearly all their neighbors under the same ruler. It 
was this state of mutual antipathy which made some kind of 
central authority indispensable, lest the whole region dissolve 
in local wars and anarchy. This really kept the empire alive 
through many crises which almost destroyed it. 

In 1870 the Austrian kaiser was Franz-Joseph, who had be- 
gun to reign in 1849 and who died a very old man during the 
Great War (1916). In 1848 a revolution had racked the 
empire. The then ruler, Ferdinand, had been constrained to 
take solemn oath to respect the new constitution granted to 
Hungary. Soon, however, the reactionaries, getting the upper 
hand, wished to annul this charter. Ferdinand's oath stood 
in their way, and they persuaded the emperor to abdicate in 
favor of his nephew, Franz- Joseph (1849). The new ruler 
was bound by no personal pledges, and therefore felt free to 
violate the constitution. War blazed up. The outraged 
Hungarians defended themselves valiantly, but the czar 
hastened to the support of his fellow-autocrat. The liberal 
movement, both in Austria proper and also in Hungary, had 
ended in the blood or exile of its champions. Franz-Joseph 
thus began his reign with a broken promise and a victory over 
his own subjects. 

This was not an auspicious beginning for a reign, and later 
events, in their turn, had not been fortunate. In 1859 this 
kaiser had been defeated by the French and by Sardinia- 
Piedmont and was forced to cede Milan to the Italians. In 
1866 Bismarck had entangled him in war with Prussia and 
Italy. Austria, at least on the northern side, again had been 
roundly beaten. She had to make peace by surrendering 
Venetia to Victor Emmanuel, and even more humiliating was 
her promise to withdraw from all her old interests in Ger- 
many and to leave Bismarck free to organize first the North 
German Confederation, and next the mighty German Empire. 
In 1871 Austria was by no means so large nor so formidable a 
power as she had seemed when Franz-Joseph began his govern- 
ment. Nevertheless, he did not lose his throne. The political 



46 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

situation within his dominions was so complex, with so many 
cross-currents and contending races and interests, that respon- 
sible men shuddered at the prospect of deposing their kaiser 
and launching forth on the waves of revolution. Each people 
within the empire desired a preferred position for itself, but 
most of them were willing to acknowledge Franz-Joseph as 
their personal sovereign, rather than experiment with an up- 
start local dynasty. 

History will probably have trouble in deciding whether this 
ruler, who lived and reigned for almost sixty-seven years, was 
a great statesman or merely a clever politician. His personal 
life was not blameless. The story of his estrangement from 
his noble empress, Elizabeth, makes very unpleasant gossip. 
Under his influence the court at Vienna had more than the 
ordinary amount of scandal among the archdukes and arch- 
duchesses — morganatic marriages, divorces, elopements, duels, 
and downright murders. As a public character, it may also 
be said that Franz-Joseph healed very few of the grievous 
sores and evils which existed in his empire when his reign be- 
gan. Certainly, too, he possessed no constructive genius. But 
if he did few great things, he surely did many clever things, 
and he kept the "Dual Monarchy" together as a formidable 
power, despite constant predictions of disaster and dissolu- 
tion. 

To have organized this ruler's empire into a compact, uni- 
fied nation would have exceeded the abilities of Julius Caesar. 
Omitting smaller races, like the Jews and Gipsies, at least 
nine considerable peoples jostled one another within the con- 
fines of the monarchy. In the west, centering around Vienna, 
were the Germans, who liked to consider themselves the ruling 
class for the entire dominion. In Bohemia were the Slavic 
Czechs; in Galicia (the Austrian share of dismembered Po- 
land) were the equally Slavic Poles, while along the shores 
of the Adriatic and in the Tyrolian land, the "Trentino," 
the speech and race was Italian. However, within the do- 
minions of the old "Crown of St. Stephen," in other words 
Hungary, the ruling folk (though not the majority of the 
whole population) were the lordly Magyars, who lived on 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 47 

cold terms with their Slavic neighbors, the Croatians, the 
Slovenes, Ruthenians, etc., and their "Latin" neighbors in 
the eastern districts, the Rumanians. Although the Germans 
and the Magyars, taken altogether, were in a minority when 
opposed to the various Slavs and Latins, nevertheless these 
two races were in a position of such advantage through long 
possession of the government, superior wealth, social influence, 
and the like that they could ordinarily manage the entire em- 
pire, provided they were able to work together. Unfortu- 
nately, however, for the stability of the races, in 1848-49 the 
imperial government had fallen out utterly with the Magyars, 
and this produced a schism in the empire, which spelled con- 
fusion. Therefore, after being beaten by France in 1859, 
Franz-Joseph had tried to consolidate and popularize his 
regime by granting a constitution, with only limited popular 
rights, to be sure, which attempted to organize all the races 
into a single empire on a decidedly consolidated system. This 
was the "Constitution of 1860," modified in 1861. 

The attempt broke down, partly because the new govern- 
ment was not sufficiently liberal in its theories, but mainly be- 
cause its success would have put the administration almost 
exclusively in the hands of the German element which con- 
trolled the court, the army, and the capital. All the lesser 
races boiled with anger, but the Magyars most of all. They 
did not recognize Franz- Joseph's right to make over their 
beloved native institutions, and their Diet refused to address 
him as "Emperor," but only as its "Most Gracious Lord." 
By 1865 it was evident that this scheme for a united Austrian 
monarchy was a failure. Then, in 1866, came the disastrous 
war with Prussia, and Franz-Joseph was driven to still further 
concessions to mollify his subjects. 

The battle of Sadowa that year did more than deprive 
Austria of her right to meddle in strictly German affairs ; it 
compelled her to become a semi-eastern state. She had now 
been booted out of Italy and also from Germany. Her Haps- 
burg emperors of strictly German lineage no longer reckoned 
more than twenty per cent, of their subjects as of the same 
race as themselves. They had just lost nearly all their grip 



48 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

on Italy. They had no hopes of expansion toward the west. 
If their monarchy was to have any future, it must be by ex- 
panding eastward, by cultivating its non-German elements, 
and by trying to vie with Russia as one of the preferred heirs 
of the moribund Turkish Empire. The obvious thing to do, 
therefore, was to make the powerful Magyars happy within the 
Hapsburg dominions, and the Vienna kaiser promptly made 
the needful concessions. 

The emperor at this stage intrusted his policy mainly to the 
guidance of a former Saxon nobleman, von Beust, who had 
entered Austrian service and who was able to take a fairly 
detached view of the claims of the contending races. Von 
Beust saw clearly that the only hope of preserving the mon- 
archy was by uniting the two predominant races — the Ger- 
mans and the Magyars — against the numerous lesser races — ■ 
especially the Czechs, Poles, and Croats. In 1867 the empire 
was completely reorganized along certain main lines. These 
were preserved, despite much friction, down to 1914. The 
Hapsburg dominions were deliberately cut in twain, except 
for certain essential purposes. The sovereign took the title 
of Emperor of Austria when he was in Vienna, but the King 
of Hungary when he was in Budapest. Hungary, with 
Croatia, Slavonia, and Transylvania, was set off as a separate 
monarchy, with its internal institutions so arranged that the 
masterful Magyars were practically sure to control its politics. 
Austria, i. e., all the rest of the Hapsburg dominions extend- 
ing in an irregular semicircle from Rumanian Bukowina on 
the east to the Italian lands on the southwest, was somewhat 
less surely dominated by the Germans centering around 
Vienna. Von Beust was quite frank in his attitude toward 
the various lesser peoples, remarking cynically to the new 
Hungarian ministry, "Do you take care of your barbarians; 
we will take care of ours ! ' ' 

Each of these states of the Dual Monarchy had its parlia- 
ment, with ministries which were to a certain extent depend- 
ent upon the good-will of the majority of the deputies, and it 
also had its own complete internal autonomy. The coins of 
each country circulated in its neighbor, but the legends on one 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 49 

set were Hungarian, and on the other were Austrian. For- 
eign affairs, the army and navy, and certain finances con- 
nected with common expenses, the two states shared together. 
When there was need for adjusting these problems delegations 
from the two parliaments, equal in number, convened sepa- 
rately, and after exchanging opinions in writing, if they could 
not reach an agreement, met jointly not to debate, but only to 
vote. A bare majority of this united body settled the issue. 
In almost every respect the equality of the two realms seemed 
complete, but the Magyars showed their political skill and 
willingness to take advantage of Franz- Joseph's need for 
harmonious • action by driving a hard bargain financially. 
They took over only thirty per cent, of the old imperial public 
debt, although Hungary probably contained much more than 
that proportion of the whole wealth of the empire; and since 
1867 it has often been complained that the Magyars exer- 
cised more than fifty per cent, of the influence in the Dual 
Monarchy, but bore less than one third of the economic burden. 
In 1870 this experiment of a twin state was very young and 
defied classification by political theorists. Its bloody dissolu- 
tion was frequently predicted. All the lesser peoples were 
more or less dissatisfied, and some were speedily working 
themselves into an ugly mood. If the Magyars could make 
equal terms with the Germans, why not the various branches 
of Slavs? But the lesser races, it was to develop, were too 
weak singly and too disunited collectively to make great head- 
way. In Bohemia the agitation of the Czechs for a separate 
" kingdom' ' at Prague, just as there was now a "kingdom" at 
Budapest, became bitter and resulted in many riots, with the 
virtual exclusion of the German language from many quarters 
of the region. Like hopes and antipathies also arose in 
Croatia under the Magyar supremacy. But Franz-Joseph 
proved a master-politician in playing one angry group against 
another and in fending off any actual rebellion. To keep the 
Czechs from getting allies, the German-Austrians, in their 
turn, made friends with the unfortunate Poles of Galicia. 
This fragment of the old Polish kingdom had nothing to ex- 
pect in the way of independent existence, unless Russia and 



50 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Prussia should disgorge their Polish seizures. The Galicians 
therefore were quite willing to work happily with the Ger- 
mans in exchange for fair local treatment Within Hungary, 
also, the skill of the Magyar minority kept the non-Magyar 
majority completely divided. The Rumanians in Transyl- 
vania had nothing in common with the Slavs in Croatia, 
except a certain dislike for their common masters, and a 
moderate amount of skill prevented them from all agitating 
too fiercely at the same time for official recognition of their 
native languages (a frequent point at issue) or for other 
special privileges. A clever juggling of elections usually 
made the Hungarian parliament consist largely of Magyars. 
The lesser peoples were noisily angry, but physically helpless. 
Thus Austria's main problems in 1871 seemed to be strictly 
internal. What object in seeking new territories, when the 
old ones seemed worse compacted than those of any other 
power in Europe ? But the Hapsburgs were an old and proud 
dynasty, with a long record of ambitious wars and acquisi- 
tions. If they resigned all hopes of expansion, were they not 
doomed to wither and perish? Besides, have not foreign 
broils and wars, assuming they bring glory, been a standard 
remedy with old-line statesmen for internal discontents? 
Likewise, it should be noticed that Franz- Joseph's reign had 
so far not been very fortunate. He had lost his grip alike on 
Italy and Germany, although one of the favorite titles of the 
princes of his line had been " augment er of the realm," and he 
could only vindicate himself by new annexations. Finally, 
it should be said, Austria, taken as a whole, lacked an ade- 
quate sea-coast. She was not so landlocked as Russia: she 
had, in fact, several good harbors on the Adriatic and an 
efficient navy which had defeated the Italians in 1866. Never- 
theless, the eyes of Vienna and Budapest statesmen turned 
greedily toward Saloniki, that great city on the ^Egean w T hich 
is the natural outlet for two thirds of the Balkan peninsula, 
if they did not turn toward Constantinople itself. While 
Russia felt herself the predestined heir to the Turkish Empire, 
Austria was hardly less conscious of this same destiny. After 
1866, with her losses in Italy and Germany, the location of all 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 51 

her hopes and aspirations was violently shifted toward the 
east, and down to 1914 her statesmen never ceased to look on 
the Balkan Peninsula as containing the lands which some day 
would recompense them for the losses of 1859 and 1866. 

Austria had a large army recruited by universal conscrip- 
tion, as was now, indeed, the custom of practically the entire 
continent. Her troops were reputed brave and skilful, de- 
spite defeats by France and Prussia. Her industrial life was 
not very highly developed, but her commerce was considerable, 
and the great estates on the plains of Hungary, the possessions 
of the lordly Magyar magnates, represented a huge agricul- 
tural interest. Taken all together, Austria seemed a far more 
powerful and wealthy empire, for one cannot say nation, than 
Italy, although she was considerably overshadowed by her 
mighty neighbors, Germany and Russia. 

Russia, like England, was in Europe, but hardly of it. 
Napoleon had said, "Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar" ; 
and while this sweeping generalization was possibly unfair, it 
was undoubtedly true that the Russians had far more in com- 
mon with Asiatics than any of their western neighbors. 

Nearly two centuries had elapsed, in 1871, since Peter the 
Great (1 682-1 725) had begun the introduction of foreign 
customs and refinements into his utterly backward empire. 
It was nearly a century since the mightiest of his successors, 
Catherine the Great, had driven the Turks from the northern 
side of the Black Sea and begun to intrude Russian influence 
into the politics and policies of Western Europe. Russia was 
still an enigma, however, to her foreign contemporaries; and 
it is proper to say that she was also an enigma to herself. The 
czars claimed for their people full status as a civilized race 
and the right to participate in the general life of the world. 
Yet of their hundred million-odd subjects, only a very small 
percentage were in a position to enjoy that general civilization 
which Germans, French, Italians, Englishmen, and Americans 
seemed to possess in common. The reason for this, of course, 
was that western ideas and manners had not grown up in 
Russia spontaneously; they had been imposed by authority 



52 THE ROOTS OP THE WAR 

from above. Peter the Great, by the sheer force of his per- 
sonality and the ruthless use of the despotic powers of the 
czars, but with the direct sympathy of ouly a minute fraction 
of his subjects, had compelled the Russian boyars to indulge 
in such elementary retinements as trimming their outrageous 
beards and allowing their women to escape from a seclusion 
almost as strict as that of Turkish harems, lie had also im- 
posed on Russia a taxation system based on western models, an 
army system organized somewhat after the principles of 
Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough, and a scheme of 
administrative ministries and government bureaus not unlike 
those of Louis XIV of France. He had contended with a vast 
amount of national inertia and a certain amount of downright 
rebellion; but the more obnoxious malcontents had quickly 
lost their heads. The great czar had lived long enough to put 
his impress upon his entire country, and things never reverted 
to their old medieval stagnation. 

Late in the eighteenth century, at the court of Catherine 
the Great (1762-1796), could have been seen a company of 
tine ladies and gentlemen, talking French, dabbling in French 
philosophy, affecting the theories of French humanitarianism, 
and wearing Paris-cut garments. The administration, army, 
and the life of the Russian upper classes had by this time re- 
ceived a distinct veneer of the glittering culture which char- 
acterized the old regime just before 17S9 and the French revo- 
lution. But these philosophizing lords and ladies did little 
that was effective in lifting the level of the doltish peasantry 
under them. The serfs in the innumerable villages still 
dragged out life in hovels and kennels, tilled the soil in dense 
ignorance of all wise systems of agriculture, and groveled be- 
fore the local orthodox priest and his dirty icons. At the 
empress's court it was entirely agreed that the serfs ought to 
be freed ; but no one could hit on a proper method of doing it. 
There were no really large cities in the empire, save only St. 
Petersburg x and Moscow, and consequently there was little of 
that intellectual progress which comes from an active, urban 

1 Since the term Petrograd was only ordained in 1014, it has seemed 
best in an historical work to keep the old-style spelling. 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 53 

life. Industries and commerce were backward. The empire 
lacked harbors, save on the Black Sea (where the exits were 
controlled by the Turks) and on the Baltic and White Seas, 
where the ice halted navigation for six months each year. 
There was a Russian navy, but many of the officers had been 
Englishmen, Dutchmen, and the like, and it was, on the whole, 
the sovereign's expensive toy and luxury. Roads were bad, 
and communication between province and province was in- 
credibly slow. The government disposed of a host of officials 
who could, in theory, have provided a highly centralized ad- 
ministration. In practice few of these officials took their 
duties seriously, and their salaries were so scanty that it was 
freely understood that they might eke them out with pickings 
and stealings, provided they kept their extortions within rea- 
sonable amounts. Russia about the year 1800 was, in short, 
a country that claimed to be Europeanized, but where the 
contrasts between pretensions and performance were gro- 
tesque. 

Between 1800 and 1871 there had been considerable change 
for the better. Alexander I, who reigned in Napoleon's time 
and who saw that conqueror slink back from Moscow, had 
been a man of liberal and fertile ideas, until the fear of 
revolution had driven him into reaction. He had executed 
sundry reforms which promised a better day. Above all, 
various young Russian officers had begun dreaming dreams 
of a free constitution along Franco-British lines. Had their 
schemes succeeded, the result would have been chaos, for no 
Christian country was then less prepared for parliamentary 
institutions than Russia. Shortly after Alexander's death 
(1825) they inspired two regiments at St. Petersburg to begin 
an insurrection, nominally in favor of a certain popular prince 
Constantine who had claims to the throne. The soldiers were 
taught to cry ' ' Long live Constantine and the Constitution ! ' ' 
and the men did so promptly, innocently believing that ' ' Con- 
stitution" was Constantine 's wife! The revolt, of course, 
failed and the ring-leaders were executed. 

Nicholas I, who was now czar (1825-55), a man devoted to 
Old Russian ideals and an extreme conservative, spent his 



54 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

whole life painfully and conscientiously combating new 
ideas and preserving the unlimited power of his monarchy. 
Censorship, secret police, the spy system, arbitrary arrest, 
sudden exiling to Siberia — all were never before or since quite 
what they became under this implacable emperor. He be- 
lieved that he was summoned by God to defend Holy Russia 
against western corruption, misrule, and infidelity. For a 
generation this grim despot terrorized his land and cast his 
malignant influence over Europe ; but in 1855 he died during 
the disastrous Crimean War, which had grievously shaken 
his prestige. 

His son, Alexander II (1855-81), was a far more humane 
and intelligent man. Despite all his father's efforts, liberal 
ideas, secret propaganda, smuggled books, surreptitiously 
published pamphlets, and the penetrations of Westernism 
through the universities had not been really prevented. Rus- 
sia was becoming caught in world- movements, and the new 
czar for a while drifted with the current. The proportion 
of really educated persons in his empire was still pitifully 
small, but these "intelligentzias," or, as their native critics 
sometimes called them, the "Westerners," were now numerous 
enough to have a real influence upon the state. The first fruit 
of their efforts was the abolition of serfdom. Nearly all the 
peasantry had been serfs, bound to the soil and with about the 
legal rights of dogs, as against often brutal and extortionate 
masters. Many of the nobles had, of course, treated their 
human cattle with fair liberality, but the system had long 
been recognized as outrageous. On February 19, 1861, by an 
imperial ukase, serfdom was abolished in the czar's domin- 
ions. Nominally, the masses of Russia became freemen and 
were entitled to a share in their communal affairs. They were 
given in full ownership a part of the lands they had once held 
from their masters, but if they wished the entire farm they 
had once cultivated as serfs, a compensation was due the 
nobleman, and the state made loans to the peasantry to help 
them discharge this expense. 

The reform was a great and noble one. Its ultimate re- 
sults proved incalculable, but the immediate consequences 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 55 

were disappointing. The peasants often could not understand 
why they should pay anything for lands their fathers had 
tilled, and they often found their new freedom of little prac- 
tical use, provided their old masters had been of the humane 
class. Very many of the nobles, in turn, with their estates 
destroyed or compromised, faced bankruptcy. Peasants quit 
the lands and began to drift to towns. There, presently, they 
began to engage in crude industries. All this, of course, up- 
set society and commerce, and produced general discontent. 
The first results of the reform were therefore disquieting. 

After 1861 the liberals had expected the czar to give them 
a constitution. Alexander II did not have the courage or 
imagination to risk this decisive step, and an insurrection 
(ill-organized and soon suppressed) in his Polish provinces 
in 1863 diverted his energies. As a sop to rising sentiment he 
established zemstvos, local assemblies in the districts, and 
higher zemstvos for the provinces, to act upon "matters con- 
nected with the economic interests and needs of the people." 
The method of electing deputies to these bodies put the main 
influence in the hands of the nobles and city folks, although the 
peasants had a form of representation. Some reforms were 
also made in the courts so as to grant juries in criminal cases 
and to give other precautions for justice to all classes. These 
innovations did not satisfy the rising demands of the liberals, 
but they were all that Alexander II could be induced to con- 
cede, and soon after 1871 there intruded foreign problems to 
complicate the home situation. 

In 1871 Russia already presented the situation which she 
still presented in 1914 — an enormous empire without a single, 
good, ice-free port, save only Odessa, which in its turn could 
be locked up at the will of the Sultan controlling the Straits 
of Constantinople. 

The right of a great nation to reasonable access to the sea 
would seem, at least according to abstract ethics, to be a 
fundamental one, and the denial of this right proved a menace 
to the peace of the world. Ever since Peter the Great's time 
(about 1700) Russia had been consciously reaching forth for 
an outlet upon the open ocean. She had gained in the interval 



56 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

great blocks of territory in Europe and Asia — Finland, the 
bulk of Poland, and wide reaches of mountain, prairie, and 
desert in Turkestan, the heart of Asia. She also had a grasp 
upon coasts along the Pacific, but again only on ice-bound 
waters — the gloomy isle of Sakhalin, the Sea of Okhotsk, and 
Behriug Sea. All these did not solve her problem. During 
the next generation a large part of the history of the world 
was to turn on the efforts of Russia to break through the ring 
of land or ice about her somewhere and thus enter on the just 
inheritance of every great nation. In at least three directions 
the Russians made a conscious effort. 

I. The czar's followers reached forth their hands across 
Turkestan and dreamed of reaching the Indian Ocean by ab- 
sorbing Afghanistan, expelling the English from India and 
conquering the weak dominions of the Shah of Persia. Here, 
of course, the chances of serious friction or a great war with 
England were considerable. But from the Russian stand- 
point this route was the hardest to follow. It involved cross- 
ing the almost impassable Hindoo-Kush and Himalaya moun- 
tains and undertaking to absorb the millions of India. These 
physical difficulties, as well as the certainty of a life-and-death 
duel with England, kept the peace far better than many hours 
of frantic telegraphing by the diplomats. 

II. The Russians also sought an outlet on the Pacific, just 
north of China. In 1871 this was only a vague project. The 
trans-Siberian railway was only a vision. The distances 
seemed enormous. But the military task seemed far easier 
than that against India. China appeared to be a helpless jelly- 
fish. Japan was barely emerging from isolation. Early in the 
twentieth century this idea of Russian domination along the 
Japan and Yellow Seas, and embracing at least Korea, Man- 
churia, and Northern China, was to come close enough to 
reality to awaken the grave concern of the entire world. This 
scheme, however, was blasted by the rise of Japan as a great 
military power and the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 
1904—5 ; but between 1871 and the later date the eyes of Rus- 
sians w T ere fixed on the Far East to an astonishing extent. 

III. The Russians, finally and preferably, were seeking to 



NEIGHBORS OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 57 

gain a warm-water port by obtaining access to the Mediter- 
ranean after the violent death of the Turkish Empire. The 
two preceding projects had been desperate expedients, but 
this third aspiration became part of an enduring national 
policy. The Russians traced their religion and, very largely, 
their civilization to the "Christian Empire of Constanti- 
nople" (Byzantium), destroyed by the Turks in 1453. To 
expel the Ottomans from their usurped dominions seemed 
to orthodox Muscovites not merely a national advantage, but 
almost a religious crusade. The Turks had been thrust out 
of their old holdings north of the Black Sea. Thanks mostly 
to Russian valor, their grip on the Christian peoples of the 
Balkans had been already seriously shaken. In 1853 Russia 
had declared war on Turkey, with the obvious intention of 
putting the ''sick man of Europe" out of his long misery, 
But England and France had declared war on behalf of the 
sultan. Austria had seemed ready to join them. Russia had 
been defeated in the Crimean War. She had lost prestige and 
even some territory. Very galling to her pride had been the 
proviso in the Treaty of Paris (1856) that she was not to 
keep ships-of-war on the Black Sea. In 1870, however, a 
sharp turn ended this handicap. The czar had been friendly 
to Prussia, and Bismarck understood how to reward the "be- 
nevolent neutrality" that had warned back Austria from be- 
coming an ally of France. He certainly approved in advance 
the action of Prince Gortschakoff, Alexander's prime minister, 
when, in October, 1870, the latter sent to all the European 
powers a note stating that Russia intended to resume her 
"sovereign rights" upon the Black Sea, because (as if antici- 
pating Teutonic acts and words in 1914) "of infringements 
to which most European transactions have been latterly ex- 
posed, and in the face of which it would be difficult to main- 
tain that the written law . . . retains the moral validity which 
it may have possessed at other times." 

England was furious at this stroke, which seemed to destroy 
most of the fruits of the Crimean War. Lord Granville spoke 
angrily about this ' ' arbitrary repudiation of a solemn engage- 
ment." Count Beust of Austria was "painfully affected" 



58 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and could not "conceal his extreme astonishment." But no 
war followed. Prussia had France by the throat. Austria 
dared not fight without an ally. England was wrathful, but 
she was not willing to kindle a world-war without a greater 
interest at stake. Russia was therefore permitted to come to 
a solemn conference convened at London in December, where 
the interested powers agreed that she should be allowed to abro- 
gate the obnoxious clauses of the Treaty of Paris. Thus in 
form the treaty had been merely revised, not broken ; though in 
fact, all the world knew that the czar had first broken the 
treaty, and then had asked permission to do so. It was another 
application of Bismarckian methods, if not a direct act of 
that master-statesman. 

By 1871, therefore, it was clear enough that Russia was 
looking again toward Constantinople. Here was her best out- 
let upon the ocean, her greatest reward for a mighty national 
effort. The conditions within the Turkish Empire were ex- 
ceedingly promising for a new attempt to gratify the darling 
ambition of the czars. Elsewhere in Europe conditions 
pointed at least temporarily toward peace. England was in- 
tent on internal reform ; France was healing her wounds ; Italy 
was consolidating her nationality; Austria was developing her 
dual system ; and Germany was digesting her recent gains and 
testing her new organization. Russia, however, by stress of 
many circumstances, was decidedly looking outward, and the 
lines of least resistance turned her toward the south. 

How weak internally the Czar's regime really was, how 
unequal it was to the strain of a prolonged modern war, and 
how the lack of enlightenment among the lower classes would 
leave them the victims of every outrageous revolutionary 
theory the instant the old autocratic authority was removed, — 
these were circumstances rarely suspected by even the harshest 
critics of the vast and imposing Russian Empire. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE OTTOMAN TURKS AND THEIR BALKAN SUBJECTS 

WITHIN five years after the close of the Franco-Prussian 
War the peace of Europe was menaced again. This 
time it was by a recrudescence of the miseries and misdoings 
of the Ottoman Turks and of their subjects. Writing in 1875, 
a distinguished English diplomat, who knew the Eastern prob- 
lem well, summed up the case thus : ' ' That Turkey is weak, 
fanatical, and misgoverned no one can honestly deny. . . . 
The chief powers of Christendom have all more or less an in- 
terest in the fortunes of an Empire which from being syste- 
matically aggressive has become a tottering and untoward 
neighbor." 1 These words would probably have been true 
twenty years before they were written, and they continued to 
be true forty years after they were written. The great war 
of 1914 had many causes, but one of the most obvious was that 
the liquidation of the Turkish Empire was by no means com- 
plete. It was still in existence, and even lands emancipated 
from its tyranny had by no means ' ' found themselves, ' ' either 
as to their appropriate boundaries or as to their relations to 
their own people or their neighbors. In no case was the old- 
style diplomacy of which Bismarck was the chief exponent 
(although in this case he had only limited responsibility) 
more bankrupt in its results than in its long attempts to deal 
with the Eastern Question. All Christian Europe was united 
in the belief that the Turks were bloody interlopers upon the 
Continent, and despite the undoubted fighting ability of the 
sultan's armies, any one of the Great Powers could have con- 
quered his entire empire, had the invader been sure of no in- 
terference from Christian rivals. But over the fate of the 
Ottoman dominions innumerable diplomats brooded long, yet 

i Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. 

59 



60 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

produced nothing but national jealousies, internal intrigues, 
costly and indecisive wars, and a new lease of life for the 
Moslem offender. 

In truth, it might have been pleaded that the complete dis- 
position of the Turkish Empire would have taxed the skill 
of a heaven-sent disposing angel. The Ottoman Turks — an 
Asiatic race of Finnish and Tartar connection — had entered 
Europe about 1353, and in 1453 they had taken Constanti- 
nople. For the next two centuries they had dominated not 
merely the Balkan peninsula, but had even lorded it over 
the greater part of Hungary. A Turkish pasha ruled in Buda- 
pest during most of the seventeenth century. In 1683 only by 
a mighty effort had the forces of the "Padishah" been flung 
back from Vienna; but after that the strength of the Otto- 
mans had waned rapidly before Austria and Russia. Long 
before Napoleon's day it had been recognized that either one 
of these powers probably could make the Turkish Empire its 
spoil, provided it were permitted to throw all of its strength 
into the contest. But the moment the weakness of the sultans 
became visible, that moment saw a veritable apple of discord 
cast before the clamorous "heirs" of the declining rulers of 
Constantinople. Napoleon himself had a keen ambition to 
make the Turkish territories part of his ever-swelling French 
Empire, and one of the reasons he broke with Czar Alexan- 
der I and started on his disastrous Moscow campaign in 1812 
was because he was unwilling to give the czar a free hand in 
overrunning Turkey in the interests of Russia. 

The Congress of Vienna (1815), which wound up the af- 
fairs of Europe after the fall of Napoleon, left the lands of 
the sultans practically intact and gave their decrepit govern- 
ment a new chance to reform and repair itself. But the op- 
portunity was poorly used. If it is hard for a Westerner to 
alter the ways of Orientals, it is still harder for Orientals to 
alter their own ways. Misrule increased, instead of diminish- 
ing. In 1853 Czar Nicholas I stated the case bluntly to the 
English ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour. "Turkey," he 
asserted, "is in a critical state . . . the country seems falling 
to pieces ... we have on our hands a sick man, a very sick 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 61 

man ; it will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if, one 
of these days, he should slip away from us before all necessary 
arrangements are made." The czar, therefore, advanced 
schemes for carving up the real estate of the "sick man" for 
the joint benefit of Russia and Great Britain. England, how- 
ever, did not accede kindly to suggestions that the downfall 
of the Turkish Empire should be taken for granted. Her 
statesmen saw visions of Cossack regiments forcing their way 
nearer the great highroads to India. France, with important 
interests in the Levant, also took umbrage, and Napoleon III, 
who had just gained power, needed a victorious war to increase 
his prestige. The Crimean War (1853-6) followed, Eng- 
land and France aiding Turkey against Russia, who claimed 
to be fighting as the champion of civilization and to save the 
Christian people under the sultan from grievous oppression. 
Russia was defeated and obliged to postpone her schemes, but 
the war brought little save glory to the victors. It was a 
wholly avoidable war and could have been shunned by a little 
conciliatoriness on either side. The Treaty of Paris (1856) 
deliberately gave the Turks another lease of life, and the great 
contracting powers solemnly ' ' guaranteed the integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire." Within twenty years, however, even 
many Englishmen were ready to admit that the Crimean War, 
with all its storied valor and suffering, had been, if not a 
crime, at least a great blunder. "The only perfectly useless 
modern war that has been waged," wrote Sir Robert Morier 
in 1870, and about 1890 Lord Salisbury, then prime minister, 
declared bluntly that ' ' England put her money on the wrong 
horse. ' ' 

Without wasting time on this question, it is fair to say that 
if England and France had frankly accepted the czar's sug- 
gestion in 1853 and had made arrangements for the deliberate 
dismemberment of Turkey, they would have given the last 
blow to an empire that had forfeited any ordinary claim to 
existence and would have surely avoided at least four later 
wars, as well as the extension of the Great War of 1914 to 
the East. Indeed, if the Ottoman Question had been wisely 
handled earlier, Armageddon for Europe and America could 



62 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

never have come upon the world in exactly the maimer that 
it did. 

But Turkey was spared in 1856, and if her rulers had been 
capable men, the}- would have accepted the respite and made 
honest use of it. Yet only a great sultan could have re- 
deemed Turkey. The governing class labored under two 
handicaps, both so serious that the problem was practically 
hopeless. (I) They were Turks; and the Turkish race, al- 
though able to produce admirable fighters and even generals, 
has never been able to produce civil administrators of decent 
ability. Turkish civil rulers had been so scarce, even in the 
days of their widest empire, that many of the non-military 
posts had been filled by supple, clever Greeks or Armenians, 
who, if willing to become Mohammedans, were often able to 
rise to be grand viziers and stand on the footsteps of the 
throne. (II) They were Mohammedans, and this meant that 
they were tied hand and foot by the rigid law and tradition of 
the prophet, whose precepts were possibly suitable for Arabian 
desert tribes, but became grotesque for a modern civilized 
empire. Any attempt at reform was met by the passive re- 
sistance of all the ulemas (the religious-legal class), by de- 
nunciation of " heresy, " and by downright rebellion. 1 The 
mandate of Mohammed to his followers to fight against Chris- 
tians and Jews until they paid tribute and submitted them- 
selves as inferiors, made it practically impossible for the sul- 
tans to place their Moslem and non-Moslem subjects really 
upon terms of equality. The official religion of Turkey was 
therefore an almost impenetrable barrier to any real attempt 
to sweep away the standard abuses of medieval Oriental des- 
potism. 

There had been, indeed, some perfunctory and well-meant 

i An American resident in Constantinople in 1875 relates that even as 
late as that date good Mohammedan Turks would not take the small 
ferry-steamers across the Bosphorus, but left them to "Christian 
giaours" The reason was that "if the Prophet had intended true be- 
lievers to use steam-boats, he would have mentioned, them in the 
Koran!" The orthodox Turks therefore crossed slowly and painfully 
in hired row-boats. 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 63 

efforts by the sultans to remedy the worst abuses. In 1856 
a solemn document, the once famous ' ' Hatti-Humayoun, ' ' had 
promised a long string of paper reforms, especially to the 
Christian subjects of the empire. They were to have com- 
plete personal and religious liberty, equality before the law, 
eligibility to public office, equality in taxation, etc. But this 
went the way of countless other equally solemn documents. 
Practically nothing came of it. In the provinces the pashas 
and the begs continued to decree justice at their own sweet 
will, a mere sweep of the hand often being sufficient sign for 
the executioner. In the sultan's palace at Constantinople 
the whim of the reigning Circassian slave-girl in the harem, 
or more likely of the chief black eunuch who had purchased 
this slave-girl for his lord, the padishah, frequently carried 
more weight than the remonstrances of some partly-European- 
ized grand vizier, who hoped to turn promised reforms into 
realities, or the protests of the British ambassador, who nat j 
urally felt anxious about the conduct of the government that 
his nation had aided to rescue from Russia. 

In 1861 Sultan Abdul-Medjid had drunk himself into the 
grave, and Abdul-Aziz reigned in his stead. Things were 
then so bad in Syria that the British ministry warned the sul- 
tan that they could not prevent "the signal punishment of a 
government which would permit such atrocities [as in Syria] 
to continue." In later years came further warnings, but 
they were all flung to the winds. Abdul-Aziz was not per- 
sonally so bloodthirsty as many Eastern tyrants, but he was 
weak, irresponsible, and extravagant. To satisfy the demands 
of the hordes of luxurious women and eunuchs who swarmed 
in his harem, the treasury was sucked dry, public works were 
neglected, and even well-intentioned pashas were obliged to 
squeeze extra taxes out of their luckless provinces. As for 
the administration of justice under this regime, the case was 
pithily summed up in the report of a British consul : ' ' I do 
not hesitate to say that of all cases of justice, whether between 
Mussulmen solely, or Turks and Christians, ninety out of one 
hundred are settled by bribery alone. ' ' In a word, the Turk- 



64 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ish Empire was not merely an Oriental despotism; it was a 
peculiarly abominable and degenerate type of Oriental des- 
potism, and it showed no signs of becoming better. 

To expect that under these circumstances Austrians would 
forget their longings for expansion toward Saloniki and the 
JEgean, and still more that Russians would put aside old 
hopes for a warm-water port and the straits of Constanti- 
nople, was something contrary to human nature. The weak- 
ness of the Turkish Empire became more evident day by day, 
and the striving of the Christian races in the Balkan Penin- 
sula to escape from an intolerable yoke supplied to Czar Alex- 
ander II a pretext, perhaps it would be fairer to say a very 
justifiable reason, for intervening in the affairs of Turkey. 

It is an axiom of history that serious wars usually spring 
from one of two sovereign causes: the ambitions of strong 
empires, or the internal miseries of weak ones. When the 
two cases are simultaneous, the powder and the match almost 
invariably come together. It was so in 1877-78. 

The Balkan peninsula is the dumping-ground for more 
races than any other similar region on the planet. This is 
probably because it forms the bridge connecting Europe with 
Asia, and also because it was the first block of land into which 
emigrant tribes could turn south, when in early barbaric 
times they rolled across the steppes of Russia, headed toward 
that blue, open water and the delightful warm countries be- 
side it, whereof they had heard by rumor. The Danube River 
and the Balkan Mountains are formidable barriers, but they 
are not unsurmountable by an enterprising horde of barbari- 
ans. By 1871, of course, the period of migrations had long 
ceased. For better or worse there were at least six different 
races in the peninsula — Turks, Greeks, Albanians, South- 
Slavs (usually divided into Bosnians and Serbians), Bulgari- 
ans, and Rumanians. One cannot understand the mazes of 
that devil's dance called the Eastern Question without know- 
ing a little of the characteristics, annals, and ambitions of 
each of these six races. 

The Turks, of course, were the ruling race. Outside of 



TURKEY IN EUROPE 

AND ITS DEPENDENCIES 
BEFORE 1876. 




OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 65 

Constantinople they were decidedly a minority all over the 
peninsula, although stronger in certain districts than others, 
with especial strength in Thrace. Little need be said of them, 
because the sultan's government then extended clear to the 
Danube, with formal suzerainty over Rumania to the north. 
In discussing the fate of the Turkish Empire we necessarily 
discuss the Turks. They were, of course, all Mohammedans, 
such a thing as a Christian Turk being practically an impos- 
sibility. 

The Greeks, occupying Old Hellas, the coasts of the iEgean, 
and having sizable colonies in Constantinople and in va- 
rious Asiatic cities, claimed to be the descendants of the 
heroes of the Trojan War and of the Battle of Marathon. 
Down to 1453 they had undoubtedly been the predominant 
race in the Levant, and after the fall of Constantinople the 
Turks had found them useful in helping to govern other con- 
quered Christian races. The Greeks had never been quite so 
oppressed as the other miserable 'rayahs,' the non-Moslem sub- 
jects of the sultans. Practically all the Christians of the 
Balkans belonged to the orthodox church, which did not 
acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, and until well into 
the nineteenth century the Greeks had controlled that church, 
supplying the supreme "patriarch of Constantinople" and 
otherwise lording it over their fellow-believers. The Greeks 
were a supple, clever race, who usually circumvented their 
Turkish tyrants by a liberal use of smoothness and sharp 
wits, and they won remarkable success in commerce and sea- 
faring enterprise. Their enemies charged them with many 
slippery vices. The answer was that only by devious means 
was it possible to escape from infidel oppression. 

In 1871, however, only a part of the Greeks were still un- 
der Turkish tyranny. Since the taking of Constantinople and 
the fall of the old Christian empire centered there, the race 
had long seemed sunk in helpless lethargy. The old Greek 
language had long become so corrupted with Italian, Slavic, 
and Albanian words that it appeared a mere jargon, com- 
pared with the tongue of Plato. The very race, it was al- 
leged, had intermarried so freely with all the other Levantine 



66 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

folk, and especially with the Slavs and Albanians, as to make 
any claim to classical ancestry absurd. But about the time 
the French Revolution came to stir the souls and imaginations 
of all Europe there was an awakening' of the old national 
Greek spirit. The language was purified and gradually 
brought back closer to ancient models. Merchants and trav- 
elers who had visited Western lands kindled an extreme dis- 
content against Turkish despotism. French and Russian 
agents and agitators from time to time stirred up similar 
feelings and excited hopes of foreign intervention, in order to 
create trouble for the sultan among his own subjects. In 
1S21 this feeling had blown into flame. The Greek War for 
Independence began. It was an inchoate, desperate struggle. 
The Greeks were without organized armies, and their fleets 
were mostly armed merchantmen; but their mountains 
swarmed with Jclephts ("brigands" to-day, "heroes of free- 
dom" to-morrow), admirable for conducting guerilla war- 
fare, and their daring seamen of the ^Egean, with their corsair 
barks and fireships, spread terror among the sultan's armadas. 
The Greeks, too, received much unofficial sympathy from Eu- 
rope. "Phil-hellenes," classical scholars who hailed the re- 
vival of the old glories of Greece, sent them money and can- 
non, as well as good will. Lord Byron, the most distinguished 
poet of his day, went to Greece, joined the insurgents, and 
died trying to aid them. The great powers, fearful of any- 
thing which would disturb the peace of the world, had at 
first given the insurgents scanty official sympathy, but grad- 
ually public opinion forced France, England, and Russia to 
act. In 1827, after horrible massacres by the Turks had out- 
raged Europe, the fleets of these three powers annihilated a 
Turkish armada in the harbor of Navarino. In 1829, follow- 
ing a land war between Turkey and Russia, the sultan was 
compelled to acknowledge the independence of his revolted 
subject, and the new Kingdom of Greece was born. 

This kingdom was for long very small, disorderly, and un- 
happy. For fear of disintegrating Turkey, the powers had 
only given it narrow boundaries — practically nothing north 
of the famous Pass of Thermopylae and only a small part of 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 67 

the numerous iEgean islands. Fully half of the Greek- 
speaking peoples were still under the Ottoman yoke. But 
even within the new kingdom, there was for long only one 
spasm of disorder after another. A Levantine people, crushed 
down by centuries of despotism, but naturally quick, liberal, 
and democratic in its genius, was now painfully trying to 
learn how to govern itself. In 1833 the great powers sent 
out as king, Otto, a son of the king of Bavaria. He was a 
well-intentioned, but heavy and tactless man, who was forced 
by an uprising in 1843 to grant a constitution to his subjects. 
Even thus, however, he did not become popular enough to 
keep his throne after another insurrection in 1862. He was 
compelled to abdicate, and the Greek National Assembly of- 
fered the crown to Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Vic- 
toria. England, however, dared not offend Russia by ap- 
pearing to make this great extension of her influence in the 
Levant. The proffer was politely declined. An undignified 
canvassing of all the eligible cadets of royal houses and other 
highnesses and serenities in Europe followed, until at last a 
son of the King of Denmark was proclaimed George I in 1863. 
He was destined to reign till 1913. 

King George had a thankless task and often undutiful sub- 
jects. The resources of his little kingdom were scanty, but 
his turbulent people were full of constant visions of recover- 
ing the districts still enslaved by the Turks, or even of re- 
storing the Christian Empire of Constantinople. Frequent 
threats and coercion by the great powers seemed necessary to 
keep the Greeks from flying into wars with Turkey, and so 
destroying the general "tranquility of the East." The 
Greeks themselves were entirely democratic, without an aris- 
tocracy, and so treated their king with almost an American 
lack of ceremony. At Athens one ministry would succeed 
another in the hot personal strife of fierce parties and factions. 
Only very gradually did the nation come to understand that 
before it could make a good case for wider boundaries and 
an honored place among the earth's peoples, it must develop 
its peaceful industries, pay its debts, and substitute law and 
order for picturesque lawlessness. In 1863 the Greeks had, 



68 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

indeed, been given the Ionian Isles (Corfu, Zante, etc.) off 
their western coast by Great Britain, which had found their 
"protection" somewhat expensive and unprofitable, but the 
Greek kingdom was still one great hothouse for unsatisfied 
national aspirations. Athens was reputed to have a more 
strenuous political life and to have more journalists with 
strident party "organs" than many other far more populous 
capitals. Too many of her young men were also handicapped 
by such christenings as Agamemnon or Odysseus, with the 
implied obligation to live up to the greatness of their names. 
And yet all the while outrageous acts of brigandage were 
taking place within a dozen miles of the royal palace. 1 

Nevertheless, all these discouraging circumstances were no 
more than to be expected in a nation barely emerging from 
many centuries of Roman, Byzantine, and finally Turkish 
despotism. The Greeks were a people of undoubted capacity, 
and had a fair claim to be awarded the entire inheritance of 
the retiring Turks, had there not been other heirs equally im- 
portunate and often more powerful. 

The Albanians require far less attention than the Greeks. 
They were a very old race, quite as old as their Greek neigh- 
bors who dwelt to the south of them. Their grandfathers 
had been the Illyrians of Greco-Roman times, brave, hardy 
barbarians who had kept their speech and native customs, 
little spoiled by the "civilization" about them, all through 
the ages. The Albanians had resisted the Turks valiantly, but 
at last had partially succumbed. A large fraction of the 
nation had become Mohammedan, although very many re- 
mained staunchly Christian. 2 

The Turks had embodied Albania nominally into their em- 

1 In 1870 a party of titled Englishmen and an Italian nobleman, while 
returning from a visit to Athens from the battlefield of Marathon, were 
carried off by brigands and, when ransom was refused and rescue at- 
tempted, murdered by their captors. 

2 These Christians are divided between Catholics and Orthodox, be- 
twixt whom there is a painful lack of charity. The religious issue in 
Albania is therefore not two-sided, but three-sided, to the great afflic- 
tion of the country. 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 69 

pire, but the authority of the sultan was never taken seriously 
along its jagged hills and valleys. The Albanians were brave 
soldiers and supplied the padishahs with admirable regiments 
and generals. When, however, taxes were proposed for them, 
all the mountains blazed up in rebellion. No region of Eu- 
rope was so uncivilized and backward as that which lay di- 
rectly across the Adriatic from southern Italy. Travelers 
found it almost equal to a voyage to Africa to try penetrating 
the Albanian hinterland. As a nation, Albania was too bar- 
barous and too divided religiously to have general aspirations. 
All it asked was to be let alone by the Turkish fiscal op- 
pressors and to be ignored by all modern " improvements. ' ' 
Tribal government was the order of the day. In 1871 nobody 
gave Albania serious consideration, or believed that in her 
aspirations lay a European problem. 

This statement could hardly be made of the Albanians' 
northern neighbors, the Serbs. A more proper name for this 
race would have been South Slavs. In the nineteenth cen- 
tury this region was split into three rather distinct fragments 
— Serbia proper, Montenegro, and Bosnia. These all dated 
from a migration of a branch of the great Slavic race into the 
Balkan peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries a. d. The 
history of this settlement had been sufficiently troubled. The 
Slavic invaders had been sometimes subject to, sometimes at 
bitter war with, the Christian emperors of Constantinople. 
The people had become for the most part Orthodox Christians. 
In the fourteenth century, under a great king, Stephen 
Duchan, they had seemed on the point of actually taking Con- 
stantinople and of becoming lords of the entire Balkan re- 
gion. But these days of power were brief. Speedily the 
Turks came, and in 1389 the famous battle of Kossova saw 
the end of the independence of Serbia proper. Bosnia, a 
separate principality, held out after a fashion until the fif- 
teenth century, when it also went the way of slavery. But 
in the rugged hills along the Adriatic the Slavs of the "Black 
Mountain," Montenegro, had kept the Turks at bay. In 
their few bleak mountain-pockets these valorous hillsmen, al- 



70 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

most alone in southeastern Europe, flung back the Ottomans. 
They were never really conquered, but continued under their 
independent and very militant prince-bishops, until in the 
nineteenth century the sultans gave up the impossible task 
of trying to subdue them. Then they gradually assumed the 
status of an independent power, the smallest in Europe, ex- 
cept, of course, such pocket-handkerchief states as Liechten- 
stein, Andorra, San Marino, and Monaco. 

Montenegro contained in its narrow limits only a small 
fraction of the South Slavs. In Bosnia and the companion 
district of Herzegovina the bulk of the nobility had aposta- 
tized and become Moslem, although the peasantry remained 
Christian. These Bosnian nobles became notorious alike for 
their oppression of their inferiors, and also for the scant 
obedience they rendered their nominal lord, the sultan. The 
pashalik of Bosnia had, therefore, one of the most turbulent, 
misruled provinces in the whole afflicted empire. The Slavs 
of Serbia proper, however, had remained on the whole 
staunchly Christian. Turkish oppression destroyed the native 
nobility and thus society was brought down to a common 
level and became strictly democratic. Life was very primi- 
tive in the Serbian country. The natives were nearly all 
farmers or graziers, or very frequently were raisers of swine ; 
and to be a successful pig-merchant was a kind of token of 
respectability. The Turks had left the village life of the 
Serbs fairly intact, and the nation had continued sound at 
heart, if very unsophisticated. Between 1804 and 1817 there 
had been revolts against the oppressor, which had terminated 
in a partial success. A principality of Serbia came into being 
which, thanks to Russian intervention, was officially recog- 
nized by the sultan in 1830 as an autonomous state, although 
in theory subject to Constantinople and with Turkish garri- 
sons still in certain fortresses. In 1867, after many clashes 
between Serb and Ottoman, these garrisons were withdrawn, 
and Serbia was independent in about all but name. 

This Serbian principality was even weaker and more dis- 
tracted than the kingdom of Greece. There were no tradi- 
tions of civil liberty or of fixed institutions. Belgrade, the 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 71 

capital, was only a small, ill-built, and very muddy city sit- 
uated in the extreme north of the country, and there were no 
other towns of size. Orderly government was handicapped 
by the existence of two rival ' ' princely ' ' houses, sprung from 
two leaders in the struggle for independence. The Kara- 
georgevic dynasty had supplied Prince Alexander I, who 
reigned from 1842 to 1859, being then tumultuously deposed 
by a popular uprising and chased into exile. In his stead 
reigned Milosh of the Obrenovic line, who held power only 
until 1860. He was a very old man, and on his death his son, 
Michael, succeeded him. The new prince was a person of 
considerable moderation and ability, and he induced the Eu- 
ropean powers to aid him in expelling the Turkish garrisons. 
But he was unable to reconcile himself to large factions of 
his unruly subjects, both those who adhered to the rival house 
and those who entertained an utterly premature vision of an 
expanded Serbia spreading over the whole of the Balkan penin- 
sula, of course at the expense of the Turks. Michael thus 
became unpopular, and the Balkan countries, like Central 
American republics, had developed abrupt and ungenteel po- 
litical methods. In 1868, as Michael walked in the palace 
park at Belgrade with his betrothed wife and her mother, 
three men rushed from the shrubbery and fired several shots. 
Michael fell dead, as did the older woman. There was not the 
least doubt that these assassins (who were later caught and 
executed) were the tools of more influential persons, probably 
the exiled Karageorgevics. The plot, however, was really a 
failure. Michael's friends kept their hold on the government, 
and Milan I, his cousin and the next heir, was seated as 
prince. As a stop-gap to popular discontent, Milan pro- 
claimed a constitution in 1869, which, however, retained great 
powers for the crown. 

In 1871 Serbia was a small, weak country, decidedly in the 
making. The great powers hardly took seriously her brave 
claims, based on her one-time boundaries in the fourteenth 
century, to a large share of the Balkans. She looked to Rus- 
sia, the ''great brother" of all the Slavs, as her friend and 
protector. Yet economically, thanks to her absolutely back- 



72 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ward agricultural and industrial state and the absence of any 
seaport for her commerce, she was almost a satrapy of Aus- 
tria. In Bosnia a great number of kindred Slavs were still 
under the heel of Turkish oppression, and the Serbs naturally 
dreamed of the day when they could unite their entire people 
under one flag; but the statesmen at Vienna smiled at these 
high expectations. 

Across the mountains in the eastern Balkans dwelt a race 
essentially different from the Serbians — the Bulgars. In no 
other part of their European empire had the Turks laid a 
heavier hand or crushed out native liberties more completely. 
The Bulgars were not Slavs. They were originally a Finnish- 
Turanian-Tartar race, with a distant kinship to the Turks 
themselves. They had entered the Balkan peninsula in the 
seventh and eighth centuries and had founded what had been 
for the nonce a pretentious kingdom. Their religion and type 
of culture had come from the Greeks of Constantinople, but 
contact with the Slavs had modified their language so that it 
seemed almost like a regular Slavic tongue. Along with so 
many other races, they had been conquered by the Turks and 
reduced to the status of mere peasants, at the same time ab- 
sorbing so much Slavic blood as to change largely the original 
condition of their race. They were without any types of na- 
tive aristocracy, and even the control of their orthodox church 
had been grasped by the Greeks, whom the Turks regularly 
sustained as the most useful branch of their Christian subjects. 
So completely did the identity of the Bulgarian nation seem 
lost, that foreign travelers in the region spoke of them as a 
kind of Greeks, and down to about the time of the Crimean 
War any Bulgar lucky enough to claim wealth and education 
was likely to describe himself as a " Greek." Then in the 
nineteenth century Bulgarian nationality, like so many other 
half-extinguished nationalities, reasserted itself. Russian 
diplomacy came to realize the value of encouraging a people 
who might well pass as Slavs and who could possibly be kindled 
to appeal to the czar to protect them against Islam. A con- 
siderable movement for Bulgarian schools and the use of the 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 73 

native tongue in churches began, and in 1860 the Bulgarian 
Christians announced that they would recognize the authority 
of the patriarch of Constantinople no longer. The sultan pos- 
sibly had not enjoyed this assertion. The patriarch had been 
his convenient tool. 1 But in 1870 Russian pressure had com- 
pelled him to set up an "exarch" in Bulgaria, to rule the 
local Christians. This gave the awakening nation a center 
and an official rallying-point. The next step might be toward 
secular, as well as religious, independence. Nevertheless, in 
1871 Europe hardly realized that there was a Bulgarian na- 
tion, much less a Bulgarian problem. The mountains in the 
eastern Balkans were still Turkish pashaliks, and no outsider 
bothered about them. Then suddenly, as by the wave of a 
magician's wand, in 1876 the name of Bulgaria was to be on 
every man's lips. 

One other Balkan population had been under Ottoman lord- 
ship. North of the Danube lay what had long been called 
The Principalities, i.e., Wallachia and Moldavia. In 1859, 
decidely against the judgment of the great powers, the peo- 
ple of these districts had insisted on uniting themselves into 
the single principality of Rumania. The Rumanians had a 
very ancient and honorable history. About 104 a. d. the Ro- 
man emperor Trajan had conquered the region (Old Dacia) 
and filled it with Latinized settlers. About 270 a. d., at the 
advance of the barbarians, the Roman government had evacu- 
ated the country, and seemingly it lapsed back to the uncouth 
Goths, Huns, Avars, and other despoilers of the dying em- 
pire. But the Latin-speaking settlers had not retired with 
the legions. In the Carpathian mountain valleys, in the great 
plains between the Pruth and the Danube, they had lived on, 
maintaining a speech which, on the whole, was closer to the 
tongue of old Rome than any other in Europe. 2 The great 

i There is a possibility, however, that at this time the patriarchs were 
getting out of hand, and the sultans were not wholly averse to a con- 
venient Bulgarian make-weight. 

2 A good Latin student can derive much profit and amusement by 
reading a Bucharest newspaper, just as a Greek student can derive the 
same by reading a periodical from modern Athens. 



74 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

invasions and the passage of conquering races did not seem 
to destroy them. They have a native proverb which time has 
made good: "The Rumanian never dies." When modern 
history dawned, the two principalities of Wallachia and Mol- 
davia, together with considerable overflow into lands pres- 
ently absorbed by Russia and Austria, were found to contain 
a race that traced its speech and traditions back to imperial 
Rome, however much the blood of the first settlers may have 
been diluted by later infusions. 

The Turks had overrun the country, but they had never 
completely conquered it. The natives kept their local insti- 
tutions, including a decidedly influential nobility and the 
right to have Christian hospodars to rule each principality. 
After 1815, thanks to increasing Russian intervention and 
pressure, the suzerainty of the sultan became little more than 
a name, but both Austria and Russia watched the Rumanians 
with a jealous eye, with a view to absorption the moment the 
general European situation favored the respective ambitions 
of Vienna or St. Petersburg. 

But during the nineteenth century the Rumanians also 
awoke to full race consciousness. In 1859 they succeeded in 
uniting their two principalities under a single government, 
and the general condition of the world was too precarious 
then for Austria and Russia to intervene. From 1859 to 
1866 the new consolidated principality was ruled by Prince 
Alexander Cousa, a native nobleman of good abilities. He 
founded universities and schools, broke up the unnecessary 
number of monasteries which had absorbed an absurd pro- 
portion of the land, and, greatest stroke of all, abolished serf- 
dom among the peasantry. But Cousa 's methods were those 
of the familiar ' ' strong man, ' ' who rides down all opposition 
by setting aside paper constitutions. He made numerous 
enemies. In 1866 a bloodless revolution deposed and ban- 
ished him. 

In 1866 the Rumanians offered their throne to Prince Carol 
of a side-branch of the Hohenzollern family, who was also, 
however, connected through his mother with the dynasty of 
Napoleon. Austria and Russia were not enthusiastic over 



OTTOMAN TURKS AND BALKAN SUBJECTS 75 

seeing a Hohenzollern reigning at Bucharest, but Bismarck 
saw the chance to put a friend of Prussia in the Balkans and 
urged the young prince to accept. "Even if you fail," said 
the great minister, "you will always remember with pleasure 
an adventure which can never be a reproach to you." 
Through fear of being halted by Austria, the prince traveled 
down the Danube disguised as a second-class passenger, until 
at Turnu-Severin, on Rumanian soil, he left the boat and was 
greeted by his future prime minister. Austria fumed and 
might have taken action, but her great war with Prussia was 
about to break out and she soon had more grievous troubles. 
The other powers declined to intervene, and the sultan, the 
prince's nominal suzerain, confirmed the new ruler. Thus 
Prince Carol kept his throne. 

In 1871 Rumania, therefore, was a country much more com- 
pletely "made" than Greece, Serbia, and, of course, Bulgaria. 
She had a rich agricultural territory, great landowners, and — 
a far more doubtful asset — hordes of poverty-stricken peas- 
antry. She had laws and institutions of fairly long stand- 
ing, and a reasonably well-organized army, but her problems 
were still many. She had not a mile of railway and very few 
good roads. Bucharest was a pitiful pretense for a capital, 
and the prince on his arrival "could scarcely believe that a 
one-storied building, looking out upon a dirty square, was 
the ' palace.' " 

There were many wealthy Jews in Rumania. Their rela- 
tions with their Christian neighbors were deplorable. The 
latter accused the Jews of taking gross financial advantage of 
the ignorant peasantry, and retaliated by frequent riots, rab- 
blings, and burning of synagogues, as well as by denying the 
Jews the rights of citizenship. The great ~boyars were like- 
wise charged with extreme oppression of the petty farmers. 
The finances of the principality were also in the usual Balkan 
tangle. 

Prince Carol, however, in the early 'seventies was already 
showing himself a capable and tactful administrator. The 
native parliaments were becoming less turbulent and more 
responsible. The economic condition of the country was 



76 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

gradually improving. When, in 1877, the great storm broke 
over the Balkan peninsula, Rumania was better prepared 
than any other of the minor countries to play an honorable 
part. 

Such, then, were the principal actors in the new drama 
about to begin in the Near East, Turkey hopelessly corrupt, 
medieval, and dying by inches ; Greece and Serbia both crude, 
restless, and seeking expansion far beyond their powers; Al- 
bania and Bulgaria seemingly mere districts of the Turkish 
Empire, and ignored by the outside world. Rumania alone 
was obviously in a fairly honorable and recognized position. 
As for the great powers of Europe, Austria and Russia were 
ready for any chance that would open for them the door to 
Constantinople, and were equally ready to bar it in the face 
of a rival. France was too perplexed at home and too help- 
less, and Italy was too newly consolidated as a great power 
to become active factors. The statesmen of England, how- 
ever, were still obsessed by their old notion that any advance 
of Russia toward a warm-water port meant peril to their own 
road to India, and therefore that, despite its obvious sins, 
"the integrity of the Ottoman Empire must be preserved." 
The sixth great power of Europe, curiously enough, seemed 
without interest in the Balkan problems. Bismarck consid- 
ered that Germany had tasks nearer home, in strengthening 
her new federal empire. It was during this period that he 
remarked, "I never take the trouble to open the mail-bag 
from Constantinople, ' ' and again, ' ' The whole of the Balkans 
is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." 
That German policy should ever seem to revolve around the 
sultan's palace, was a thing that apparently never entered 
the head of the cool, practical, and eminently conservative 
founder of the Hohenzollerns ' empire. 



CHAPTER Y 

THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 

IN 1875 the peasants of Herzegovina, a district of Bosnia, 
infuriated by the taxes imposed by the Turkish officials 
and also by the demands for forced labor by their own 
Mohammedanized nobles, rose against their oppressors and 
defeated a small Turkish army. Instantly their Slavic 
brethren in Serbia, Montenegro, and even in the Austrian 
province of Dalmatia, flocked in as volunteers. Serious fight- 
ing set in, and diplomats began to spend anxious evenings 
and did much telegraphing. There is good reason to believe 
that both Austrian and Russian agents had been stirring up 
discontent in the province, for neither Czar Alexander II nor 
Kaiser Franz-Joseph were men unwilling to fish in suitably 
troubled waters. 

The case, nevertheless, soon became so dangerous that the 
European consuls in Bosnia had to stir themselves to end 
the disturbances. The insurgents, however, were tired of 
Turkish promises and of mollifying speeches from Christian 
peoples more fortunate than themselves. They demanded 
what amounted to autonomy. The sultan responded with 
pledges of glittering reforms. These did not end the insur- 
rection, and on top of this the Turkish government was 
obliged to display its evil state to all the world by announcing 
that it could not pay the full interest on its public debt. Such 
an act, of course, forced the issue. Many millions' worth of 
Turkish bonds were held throughout Europe. The bond- 
holders were far more influential and their outcries carried 
much further than the wretched Bosnian peasants. The first 
fruits of their clamors was the formation of a common pro- 
gram by the three great imperial powers, Germany, Austria, 
and Russia, which were then loosely allied together in what 
was known as the "League of the Three Emperors." With 

77 



78 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the consent of the other two empires, Count Andrassy, chan- 
cellor of Austria, addressed a solemn admonition to the sultan, 
reciting the sins of his government and specifying certain re- 
forms which seemed indispensable. The Ottomans received 
this Andrassy Note in January, 1876, with the nominal ac- 
ceptance of most of its clauses; but the Bosnian insurgents 
were not willing to lay down their arms merely because the 
Austrian consuls now told them that the sultan had promised 
to be good ; and the Turks retaliated by saying they could not 
institute reforms in taxation, fair treatment of the peasantry, 
the administration of justice, etc., while their subjects were 
still in arms against them. The insurrection thus grew, in- 
stead of ending. Serbia and Montenegro seemed on the point 
of declaring a regular war in behalf of their brethren in Bos- 
nia, and Mohammedan fanaticism in turn became kindled. 
In May, 1S76, a fierce Moslem mob attacked and murdered 
the German and French consuls in the city of Saloniki. 
There were riots in Constantinople. The several thousand 
softas, or Turkish theological students, rose, crying out 
against the grand vizier as being too friendly to Russia, and 
the weak sultan was compelled to dismiss him. All this, of 
course, showed that the situation was getting out of control. 

Already the "three emperors' league" was considering an- 
other attempt to calm the rising tempest. In May, 1876, 
appeared the Berlin Memorandum, a document prepared after 
conference with Prince Bismarck by the Russian and Austrian 
prime-ministers. It demanded an armistice with the Bosnians 
and the appointment of a mixed commission of natives, with 
a Christian president to arrange the affairs of their country. 
The insurgents were to be allowed to remain in arms until 
the sultan's promises became a reality. To this note France 
and Italy assented; but there was one power which did not 
assent, namely, Great Britain. 

Many Englishmen since 1876 have considered this action 
by their government as a crowning blunder. The prime-min- 
ister of Great Britain at this time was Mr. Disraeli, soon to 
be known as the Earl of Beaconsfield. This brilliant and ver- 
satile leader of the Conservative party may fairly be called 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 79 

the founder of modern British imperialism. To him Eng- 
land was not a i ' tight little island, ' 7 with a thriving commerce 
which was increased by the chance that she possessed divers 
colonies ; she was the center of an enormous empire embracing 
manifold lands and races, many in species but one in loyalty 
and abiding principles, and making the oceans her highway 
to bind her mighty members together. In compliance with 
this ideal, Disraeli caused Queen Victoria to be proclaimed 
"Empress of India," and otherwise indicated his belief in the 
imperial nature of Britain and her possessions. 

Disraeli, however, carried w T ith this zeal to extend the power 
and limits of Britain another passion, less fortunate, it proved, 
even for selfish British interests. All English statesmen in 
the later nineteenth century were bred in the belief that 
Russia was irrevocably their foe; and every move in the 
world's politics which seemed to Russia's advantage appeared 
a direct stab at the interests of their own empire. This feel- 
ing Disraeli possessed, even beyond the run of his peers. He 
was anything but a pacifist in his theories, and repeatedly he 
seems to have been quite willing to force diplomatic action 
with Russia to the breaking point, and then to welcome the 
bloody issue. His colleagues in the ministry could usually 
restrain him, but to the end of his career he remained the 
distrustful foe of anything satisfactory to the czar. Disraeli, 
also, was of Jewish ancestry, although a member of the Eng- 
lish established church. His enemies taunted him with an 
undue willingness to see good in Mohammedanism, and in any 
case he became an extreme apologist for the dark doings of 
the sultans and a strenuous defender of the ' ' integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire." It is necessary to understand this view- 
point and these personal peculiarities of the prime minister 
of England to interpret the things which followed. 

Great Britain refused to concur in the Berlin Memorandum. 
There is no doubt that Disraeli felt justly piqued because the 
ministers of the three emperors proceeded to formulate com- 
mon demands on the Ottomans without consulting England 
in advance. The "Concert of Europe" had been decidedly 
wrenched by the action. Nevertheless, the consequences of 



80 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

British refusal to support the demands of the other powers 
on the sultan spelled misery for the innocent, and also caused 
a bloody war. The Turks had been accustomed to play one 
Christian empire against another, and then to snap their 
lingers. They now reckoned that Germany, France, and 
Italy would never go beyond diplomatic protests ; Russia and 
Austria they also felt sure could not unite in a firm alliance ; 
while England, for so Disraeli's attitude seemed to indicate, 
would probably give them military and naval aid against the 
czar. 

In May, 1876, the Berlin Note was presented, and almost 
simultaneously Great Britain, as if to show her friendship 
for the Turks, ordered a squadron to Besika Bay. In Con- 
stantinople matters were moving briskly. The reigning sul- 
tan, Abdul- Aziz, had disgusted all responsible Turks by his 
extravagance and gross incapacity. There was a fairly intel- 
ligent faction in Constantinople which saw the empire drift- 
ing to calamity for lack of efficient leadership. This party 
secured the fetvah (solemn decree) of the Sheik-ul-Islam (the 
head of the Turkish branch of Islam), authorizing the re- 
moval of the Padishah whose government was bringing ruin 
to the faithful. The guards about the palace were tampered 
with. Abdul- Aziz was easily overpowered and deposed, and 
his nephew, Murad V, was set upon the throne of Mohammed 
the Conqueror. Four days later it was announced that Abdul- 
Aziz had committed suicide by means of a pair of scissors, 
loaned him for trimming his beard. 1 Murad, however, soon 
proved to be either "feeble minded," or possibly was not 
sufficiently pliable for the pashas who had put him in power. 
In August, he in turn was deposed, and in his place reigned 
his brother, Abdul-Hamid II, who was at first too inexperi- 
enced to have a will of his own, although later he was to 
develop into one of the shrewdest and most bloody of all the 
Ottoman line. 

While this national party among the begs and pashas was 

i Improbable as this story seems, in view of the usual fate of de- 
posed Oriental monarchs, it is by no means certain that Abdul-Aziz 
was murdered. 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 81 

trying to introduce a modest degree of efficiency into the Con- 
stantinople government, to shake off foreign influence, and to 
rally the nation to the cry of ' ' Turkey for the Turks, ' ' officers 
in their army were making it impossible for Great Britain to 
give their country the expected aid against Russia. The 
Bosnian revolt had spread elsewhere in the Balkans. The 
Bulgarian villages had become restless. There was a feeble 
insurrection in their region. About one hundred Turks were 
killed by the Bulgar insurgents. The answer came when the 
government sent an army of regular troops and a still larger 
horde of Bashi-Bazouks, irregular soldiers under the laxest 
kind of discipline, into the Bulgarian Mountains. The 
slaughter of the defenseless peasantry was terrible. In the 
town of Batak only two thousand of the seven thousand in- 
habitants escaped cold-blooded murder. The whole number 
of Christians thus massacred was probably over twelve thou- 
sand. Sex or age had not been spared, and a British com- 
missioner, sent to investigate the rumors of horror, reported 
the whole deed as "perhaps the most heinous crime that has 
stained the history of the present century. ' ' 1 Achmet Aga, 
the leader of this murderous crew, was, however, decorated by 
his government for his brave services, and for an instant the 
Disraeli government committed the blunder of trying to min- 
imize this deed of their announced proteges. But the Eng- 
lish Liberal papers soon ran down the facts. Mr. Gladstone, 
former and future prime minister, and Disraeli's chief polit- 
ical opponent, left his theological studies on "Future Retri- 
bution" to write a famous and utterly damning pamphlet en- 
titled ' ' The Bulgarian Horrors. ' ' The conscience of England 
was stirred by his speeches and publications. It assented 
to his stern dictum, "Let the Turks now carry away their 
abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying away 
themselves. . . . One and all, bag and baggage, [they] shall, 
I hope, clear out of the province they have desolated and pro- 
faned." 

i On the highroad from Sophia to Ruschuk, used by the Bashi-Bazouks, 
even to-day the towns are not built along the general way, but are con- 
cealed in the valleys and gorges. Thither the wretched Bulgar peas- 
ants fled in 1876, and all of them have never come down again. 



82 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

It was folly for the Disraeli government to invite repudia- 
tion at home by giving further countenance to a government 
which could work deeds like these. ''Even if Russia were to 
declare war against the Porte 1 (sultan)," wrote Lord Derby 
to Constantinople, "Her Majesty's government would find it 
practically impossible to interfere." 

War between Russia and Turkey was becoming every day 
more of a certainty. While the Bulgarian massacres were 
proceeding, Serbia and Montenegro had declared war (June, 
1876) upon the sultan. Their zeal to rescue their oppressed 
fellow-Slavs in Bosnia was excellent, but a good cause does 
not always spell victory. The Montenegrins won some suc- 
cesses, but the more ambitious Serbian campaign speedily came 
to grief. Once more, as so often has happened, it was dis- 
closed that, grievously as the Turks had degenerated, they 
were still first-class fighting men. The sultan's ministers had 
not been too corrupt and inefficient to fail to obtain a good 
supply of breech-loading rifles. The Serbian army, despite 
large reinforcements by Russian volunteers, was speedily de- 
feated, and Prince Milan called lustily for an armistice. But 
the powers were unable to arrange a satisfactory accommoda- 
tion between the contending parties. Every day that the 
quarrel continued promised new perils for the peace of the 
world, and the English, in turn, began to give their Ottoman 
proteges frank advice about reforms and pacification. It was 
not English admonition, however, but Russian action, which 
brought a momentary respite. On the thirtieth of October 
General Ignatieff, the special ambassador of the czar to Con- 
stantinople, gave the Turks forty-eight hours to conclude an 
armistice with Serbia. With this pistol at his head, the sultan 
halted. Fighting ceased. The diplomats once more resumed 
their weary efforts, making a last desperate attempt to save 
the sultan from his sins. 

In December, 1876, a conference of the powers met at Con- 
stantinople for the purpose of giving Abdul-Hamid II sage 
advice. Even as their excellencies the ambassadors were in 

i The Sublime Porte is the ordinary official title for the Turkish gov* 
ernment. 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 83 

session, sudden salvos of artillery distracted their august de- 
liberations. Prompt questions were raised, and a sleek and 
smiling pasha announced that the Padishah, out of his vast 
love for his people, had bestowed upon them a liberal con- 
stitution, a constitution, in fact, more liberal on paper than 
that of Russia, Germany, or possibly even that of Austria. 
A nominated senate, an elected chamber of deputies, a re- 
sponsible ministry, freedom of meeting and of the press, com- 
pulsory education, etc., etc., — all these blessings, by one stroke 
of the pen, were to come to the fortunate subjects of the suc- 
cessor of the kalifs and the sultans. The diplomats, however, 
were too hard-headed to be imposed upon by any such farce. 
Even the British delegates refused to take the new liberty 
seriously, and the Russian ambassador soon quit Constanti- 
nople in wrath. 

But the Turks used their new constitution with some adroit- 
ness as a scheme for further delay. How could the powers 
continue to demand reforms when all possible reforms were 
going to be voted and put into effect — just as soon, of course, 
as the new parliament could be convened and pass the neces- 
sary measures? And, in the meantime, how could the Padi- 
shah, as a "constitutional sovereign," enact legislation by 
his mere flat ? As for other matters, the Turks proved them- 
selves to the ambassadors to be incorrigible. When the ques- 
tion of Bulgaria was raised, the sultan's ministers at first 
solemnly averred ' ' they did not know w T hat the word meant. ' ' 
They permitted themselves to remember that it might be a 
"geographical term for the region north of the Balkans," but 
that was all. In short, these slippery barbarians, "who wore 
tight clothes and chattered French," but who seemed to have 
neither honesty nor intelligence under their red fezzes, alien- 
ated their last friends and drove even England to wash her 
hands of them. Lord Salisbury, going home in despair, de- 
clared that "all had tried to save Turkey, but she would not 
allow them to save her." Thus the year 1877 opened with 
war between the czar and sultan all but certain, and England 
looking on as a neutral. 

Czar Alexander II was probably an honest lover of peace, 



84 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

but despotic as were the institutions of Russia, he could not 
be indifferent to public opinion. 1 The Muscovite empire had 
lately been stirred by a strong Pan-Slavic movement, an agi- 
tation for the union of all Slavdom in one confederacy, of 
course under the hegemony of Russia. So far as this affected 
the Slavs ruled by Austria, such an ambition had to be checked 
by the government, or it would have led to interminable wars ; 
but the rescue and vindication of the South Slavs of Bosnia 
and Serbia was a different affair. Likewise, the outraged 
Bulgars were counted Slavs, too; and their woes had pro- 
duced a great impression at St. Petersburg and Moscow. Also, 
to the Muscovites, with their passionate loyalty to the ortho- 
dox church, the summons to rescue their fellow-Christians 
from Turkish tyranny came as a call to a crusade ; and Rus- 
sians, imperfect as had long been their own liberty, have re- 
peatedly shown the idealism which carried them on to make 
sacrifices for the liberties of others. Finally, and of still 
keener national interest, was the fact that in marching as 
the champion of Christian civilization against the sultan, 
Russia was also taking another step toward that outlet upon 
warm, blue water which was a necessity for her empire. All 
in all, Alexander II drew the sword in 1877 with a great na- 
tional enthusiasm impelling him forward. The war was pop- 
ular for the time in Russia. A private understanding with 
Austria had assured the czar against interference fr~m 
Franz-Joseph, and the military course therefore seemed very 
plain. 

On April 10, 1877, the Turks in a spirit of incredible folly 
rejected the London Protocol, a last despairing proposal for 
reform which had been flung at them by the concert of the 
powers. Down to the last the sultan and his grand vizier had 
hugged the delusion that England would somehow fight for 
them. Lord Salisbury had vainly telegraphed to London 
from the Constantinople conference, "The grand vizier be- 

1 By Russian "public opinion" is meant of course that of the small 
but influential educated upper classes. The ignorant lower classes 
were then probably without any ideas about foreign policy save pos- 
sibly a vague notion that it was always well to rescue Christians from 
the infidel. 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 85 

lieves that he can count on the assistance of Lord Derby and 
Lord Beaconsfield. " Yet the British cabinet had nevertheless 
failed to make it plain to Abdul-Haniid that it could never 
stand between him and the wrath of Russia, as he had now 
provoked it. The Turkish ''free parliament/' although duly 
"elected" and opened with some pomp in March, 1877, had 
instantly exhibited itself as nothing but a comically useless 
tool for the purposes of despotism. Its members were mere 
dummies for the government, 1 and were speedily nicknamed 
the "Yes, Sirs" (Evet Effendim), from their willingness to 
ratify every suggestion from above. On April 24 the czar 
took the long expected action and declared war. 

The Russian navy on the Black Sea had not been rebuilt 
sufficiently since 1871 to cope with the Turkish fleet which 
contained several formidable ironclads. The way to Con- 
stantinople, therefore, lay across Rumania. There were di- 
vided councils at Bucharest as to permitting the Russians to 
go through, but the sultan committed the blunder not merely 
of calling on ' ' his vassal ' ' to preserve neutrality, but of sum- 
moning Prince Carol to take up arms against the enemies of 
his suzerain. The prince was naturally anxious to become an 
independent sovereign, and speedily made a treaty with Rus- 
sia for full alliance, although Gortchakoff, the czar's prime 
minister, arrogantly told him at first, ' ' Russia has no need for 
the assistance of the Rumanian army." The legions of Alex- 
ander II, therefore, streamed across Wallachia, while the 
prince issued a formal proclamation of Rumanian independ- 
ence. 

The Russians had entered into the war with enthusiasm and 
confidence that the odds were so entirely on their side that, 
if Western Europe would but give them fair play, they could 
easily crush the infidel. Their difficulties, however, were 
great. The Turkish navy prevented the use of transports on 
the Black Sea and the railroads through Southern Russia were 
few and in Rumania still fewer. The hindrances to moving 

i When once it was evident that the new "constitution" would serve 
no purpose, it was duly suspended (1878), and without being formally 
abolished, remained in innocuous desuetude until 1908, when it was 
very curiously revived. (See chap. XIII.) 



86 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

huge armies at a vast distance from their base thus proved al- . 
most uusurmouutable. The czar's forces also suffered, as in the 
Great War some four decades later, from rascally contractors ) 
and grievously imperfect munitions and supplies. Alexander, 
too, at first had trouble in finding highly competent generals. 
Nevertheless, the incapacity of the Turkish commanders was, 
on the whole, so great that only the offsetting excellence of 
the Turkish infantrymen seemed likely to make the war at 
all equal. In the summer of 1877 the Russians forced their 
way over the Danube, penetrated Bulgaria, took Tirnova, the 
old capital of that afflicted country, and, to crown all, seized 
Shipka Pass, the best defile over the Balkan Mountains. 
There was panic in Constantinople, and a hasty shifting of 
posts took place among the excited pashas. Then came a long 
respite. The Turks had found a really able general — one 
of those admirable fighters who often come out of the Orient — 
Osman Pasha, who was able to inflict on the czar and his 
grand dukes anxious nights, heavy losses, and a humiliating 
delay. 

In their sudden advance through Bulgaria the Russians had 
neglected to occupy the small town of Plevna, located most 
strategically at the intersection of the main roads along which 
the invaders must pass. With some forty-five thousand men 
Osman Pasha flung himself into Plevna, and suddenly the 
Russians found their whole line of advance menaced. On 
July 20, not realizing the strength of their enemies, they as- 
saulted with inadequate forces and met a bloody repulse. 
Ten days later a more powerful attack met a still greater | 
disaster. There was nothing for it but the Grand Duke i 
Nicholas must needs telegraph to Prince Carol to bring up 
his despised Rumanian allies to aid in the siege. The prince 
proudly required (and obtained) that he should be appointed 
commander-in-chief of the entire besieging force. On Sep- 
tember 11 there was a third and still more desperate assault. 
The Rumanians covered themselves with glory before the 
bloody Turkish breastworks, but the pasha's inner lines could 
not be carried. The only option was to bring up reinforce- 
ments, hem Osman in, and slowly starve him out. This last 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 87 

stage of the siege lasted till December 10. In the meantime 
the whole Russian plan of campaign lagged, and if there had 
been real capacity at Constantinople, something might have 
been done to save the Ottoman Empire from overthrow. But 
Osman was unique in his tenacity and skill among the Turkish 
commanders. In Asia, in the Caucasus region, where, of 
course, an independent campaign could be conducted, the 
Turks had been driven from post to post, and on November 18 
they lost the great fortress of Kars. At last, in December, 
the stout Osman was at the end of his resources. He served 
out his last biscuits and ammunition to his men and made 
a despairing attempt to cut his way through the besiegers. 
The effort failed, and he surrendered with forty thousand 
half-starved troops. The Russians treated him honorably as 
a doughty foe, and well they might. He had cost them twenty- 
one thousand men (sixteen thousand Russians and five thou- 
sand Rumanians) and five months of valuable time. But the 
roads through Bulgaria had been opened at last ! 

The surrender of Osman was followed by the speedy rout 
of the remaining Turkish armies. The czar's service had 
now developed two redoubtable generals, Gurko and Skobe- 
leff. The first of these took Sofia and utterly defeated the 
army of Suleiman Pasha near Philippopolis ; the second re- 
opened Shipka Pass, which had been almost rewon by the 
Turks during the siege of Plevna. Serbia, too, was again in 
arms; likewise little Montenegro; while from every other 
quarter messengers of calamity hastened in toward Abdul- 
Hamid's palace. The Cossacks raged and raided through 
the Mohammedan regions around Adrianople in a manner that 
indicated that Christians also understood the arts of massa- 
cre. Adrianople itself fell in January, 1878, and so far as 
the sultan's own strength was concerned, the Turkish power 
was at an end. There was nothing for it but to negotiate. 
With a noose about their necks the Ottomans accepted an 
armistice on January 31, to be followed by the more definitive 
Treaty of San Stefano, signed on March 3, 1878. 

San Stefano is a small village on the outskirts of Constan- 
tinople, the Russians having thus advanced almost to the goal 



88 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of their ambition. The Muscovites were in great anxiety to 
tie their defeated foes by a hard and fast treaty and con- 
front Europe with an " accomplished deed" before the other 
great powers, and especially England, could intervene. The 
czar's ministers knew that not merely England, but Austria 
would fight to the death rather than see them occupy Con- 
stantinople, and they did not attempt it; but otherwise the 
changes they dictated were sweeping enough. Montenegro 
and Serbia were to receive appreciable increases of territory. 
Bosnia was to be "reformed" not by promises only, but under 
the joint control of Austria and Russia. Other reforms were 
to be granted the oppressed Armenians in Asia Minor, in 
which region a considerable strip of territory (including 
Kars) was to be ceded outright to Russia. As for Rumania, 
she was to be set up as a strictly independent nation, but she 
was to cede Bessarabia 1 to Russia and receive in return (at 
the expense of Turkey) the Dobrudja, the miasmic marshy 
delta of the Danube. But the most striking clause was that 
relating to the creation of an entirely new unit in modern 
Europe — Bulgaria. According to the terms of this treaty 
a huge Bulgaria would have sprung into existence. Constan- 
tinople and its hinterland back to Adrianople, Saloniki and 
the territory around it, anol part of Albania would have been 
left to the sultan; otherwise he would have been expelled 
from Europe. The lost dominions were to be formed into "an, 
autonomous tributary principality, with a Christian governor 
and a national militia." Abdul-Hamid 's pride might be 
salved a little by saying that the new country was merely 
to be a vassal-region of the Ottoman Empire. The fact, of 
course, was evident to all men that practically the vassalage 
consisted in a certain amount of tribute money, likely to cease 
some fine day. By their own sins and follies the Ottomans had 
had themselves pushed to the outermost corner of Europe. 

As the Russians advanced, and, still more, as the full tenor 
of their demands became evident, a large percentage of the 

i This strip of country was inhabited by Rumanians, but it had been 
held by Russia prior to the Treaty of Paris (1856), when the czar had 
been forced to surrender it. 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 89 

English public took ever-increasing alarm. The memory of 
the Bulgarian massacres was already fading; the fear of the 
Muscovites advancing along the road to India by way of Con- 
stantinople began again to grip the British heart. It was 
claimed, with some show of justice, that the czar was anxious 
to impose a peace, as if the quarrel were between him and the 
sultan alone, to the total ignoring of legitimate British inter- 
ests. Within the London cabinet there was much difference 
of opinion. Disraeli himself said whimsically that "there 
were six parties in the ministry. The first party wanted im- 
mediate war with Russia ; the second was for war in order to 
save Constantinople; the third was for peace at any price; 
the fourth would let the Russians take Constantinople and 
then turn them out ; the fifth wanted to plant the cross on the 
dome of St. Sophia; and then there was the Prime Minister 
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Northcote] who desired 
to see something done, but did n 't know exactly what ! ' ' * It 
is fairly certain, however, that Disraeli was quite ready to 
go to war, if Russia did not knuckle under, and only the re- 
sistance of his colleagues prevented more drastic action being 
taken by England than actually eventuated. 

Thus for some weeks the Muscovites and Turks confronted 
one another grimly at the very gates of Constantinople, while 
a British fleet rode in the Sea of Marrnora inside the Darda- 
nelles, ready to land men at Constantinople itself, in case the 
invaders showed signs of attacking the city. The whole situ- 
ation was ticklish for the peace of Europe. The least un- 
toward incident would have set the Russians and British at 
one another's throats, despite the fact that unless England 
had found a land ally, the struggle would have been, as Bis- 
marck sarcastically declared, "a fight between an elephant 
and a whale." 

Under these circumstances war would surely have followed, 
had not Russia been willing to consider the question of the 
revision of the Treaty of San Stefano. There were plenty of 
hot-headed officers around the czar and plenty of ardent Pan- 
Slavists in the rear quite ready to urge flinging defiance at 

i Quoted in Rose's "Development of European Nations," Vol, I, p. 267. 



90 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Disraeli and tempting his government to do its worst. But 
Russia 's hand was forced by the threatening attitude of Aus- 
tria. Despite the fact that Franz-Joseph had given some 
kind of assurances of neutrality when the attack on Turkey 
began, Austrian troops now began to mobilize in the Car- 
pathians in a position to make a deadly flank attack upon the 
Russians, strung out as they were in a long line of communi- 
cation through Rumania and Bulgaria to the gates of Con- 
stantinople. The fear lest the proposed Bulgarian state would 
be a satrapy of Russia in all but name had entered the hearts 
of the leaders at Vienna no less than at London. It would 
have been tempting destruction to have fought both England 
and Austria simultaneously, and, as a consequence, even before 
the final signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, the czar be- 
gan giving tokens of a willingness to compromise. Neverthe- 
less, ere Alexander II could be induced to lay the settlement 
of the Balkans before a general congress of the powers, there 
were tense moments and renewed threats of war. 

During this period of stress, when London was tossed by 
a patriotic fervor, the famous phrase "jingoism" seems to 
have been coined. It probably originated from a popular 
music-hall effusion by an unofficial poet-laureate, which ran 
thus: 

We don't want to fight, 

But. by jingo, if we do. 

We 've got the ships, we 've got the men, 

And we 've got the money, too ! 

On April 1, 1878, Disraeli gave notice that the reserves of 
the British army and navy would be called out. Fifteen days 
later, to advertise to the world the solidarity of the queen's 
empire, he ordered eight regiments of Indian Sepoy troops 
to Malta. This sign of resolution brought the czar's minis- 
ters to a more tractable mood, and they agreed to such con- 
cessions concerning the boundaries of Bulgaria, etc., as to 
make it likely that peace could be maintained. But mean- 
time Disraeli was proving to the Turks that he was not cham- 
pioning their integrity out of pure disinterested friendship. 
By letting them believe that Russia was likely to renew the 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 91 

war, and that English aid would be indispensable, the sultan 
was induced to promise that if Russia retained her conquests 
in Asia Minor (as it was perfectly certain she would do) and 
was likely to push her conquests further, England would give 
armed aid to the sultan, but to enable England to defend 
these territories the Ottomans gave her the occupation and 
administration of Cyprus. 1 The sultan also promised to in- 
troduce the "necessary reforms" for the protection of the 
Armenian Christians. The peculiar execution of these re- 
forms and England's part therein were destined to play a 
very ignoble part in later history. 

Russia was thus forced to submit her entire scheme for the 
reconstruction of the Balkans to a congress of the powers. 
This congress presently assembled (June 13 to July 13, 1878) 
at Berlin, and was undoubtedly the most distinguished diplo- 
matic gathering since the Congress of Vienna (1814^15). 

That Bismarck, the acknowledged center of the public life 
of Europe, should preside over this assembly was, of course, 
only natural. He had invited the diplomats to accept the 
hospitality of his emperor on the ground that Germany had 
no selfish interests to pursue in the Balkans, was partner in 
no quarrels, and was intensely anxious to keep the general 
peace. He openly proclaimed himself as sure to be an "hon- 
est broker" for all his distinguished friends and clients. 
Nevertheless, the Russians, went to Berlin with the firm ex- 
pectation that the "Iron Chancellor" would prove their po- 
tent advocate and even their champion. The services Russia 
rendered Germany in 1870, when a broad hint from the czar 
prevented Austria from going to the aid of France, were 
admittedly very great. William I, himself, had written to 
Alexander II, "Prussia will never forget that she owes it to 
you that the war (with France) did not assume the most 
extreme dimensions ; may God bless you for it. " 2 Now, 

i The innocent Turks did know that Britain and Russia had reached 
a working agreement five days before the Cyprus Convention was 
signed (June 4, 1878). They had bartered away a rich island for a 
promise to fight in behalf of the Ottomans, which England knew she" 
would not have to redeem ! 

2Coolidge; "Origins of the Triple Alliance." p. 156. 



92 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

surely, was the time for active gratitude, for the exertion of 
all Bismarck's tremendous influence to see to it that the 
arrangements of San Stefano were modified as little as pos- 
sible ! 

The Russians went to Berlin in at least partial innocency. 
They found themselves utterly deceived. The "Iron Chan- 
cellor" afterward said he in no wise deserved their wrath, 
but rather that he ought to have been decorated by the czar 
for his very friendly services. Russian public opinion, how- 
ever, laughed his protestations to scorn. It could point to 
the undeniable fact that at the congress of powers Bismarck 
had swung all his influence over to the side of England and 
Austria, and had permitted the Treaty of San Stefano to be 
rewritten radically and that, too, in a manner to Russia's 
great hurt. The motives Bismarck had for this change of 
policy are explained elsewhere, but the accomplished results 
were blazoned before all Europe. In 1878 it became perfectly 
evident that between Berlin and St. Petersburg warm friend- 
ship had ceased. 

Aside from Bismarck himself, the gathering at Berlin was 
notable. Seldom have more premiers or foreign ministers 
of mighty nations sat around one table. France and Italy 
were represented, although France was still too crushed by 
the events of 1870 to have much influence, and Italy was 
hardly as yet counted a great power, except by courtesy. 
Austria sent her prime minister, the astute Count Andrassy, 
Russia her chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, a man of consid- 
erable ability, but on bad personal terms with Bismarck and 
therefore not a fortunate delegate to win the favor of the grim 
president of the congress; and England was represented by 
her capable foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, and last but 
not least by Disraeli himself, now elevated by his countrymen 
to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfleld. The proceedings 
of the congress were, of course, after the bad type of the old- 
style diplomacy, where the formal sessions and official pro- 
tocols were only half to disclose and confirm what had been 
determined in private conferences and "deals." 



SICK MAN OF EUEOPE AND HIS SURGEONS 93 

Bismarck and the strong Austrian influence were so decid- 
edly on Beaconsfield 's side that he had little difficulty in 
forcing the Russians to assent to almost any terms which were 
not too humiliating. In fact, Beaconsfield personally seemed 
to dominate the entire gathering. ''The old Jew — he is the 
man!" remarked Bismarck pithily; and the English prime 
minister himself was quite aware of his hour of triumph. 
It is recorded that the Russo-Polish Princess Radziwill met 
him at a brilliant reception the night that the news of the 
Cyprus convention was made public. As he wandered among 
the throng of buzzing, criticizing, yet admiring generals and 
diplomats, the princess asked the prime minister, "What are 
you thinking of ?" "I am not thinking at all," replied Bea- 
consfield magnificently, "I am merely enjoying myself." 

The czar's ministers, in short, were soon aware that they 
could not fight England with Austria as her ally, and with 
the sinister hands of Bismarck behind Austria. There was 
nothing for it but to save out of the wreck of the San Stefano 
project whatever part they could. The sultan, of course, had 
his direct advocates, Katheodri Pasha and Mehemet Ali Pasha, 
respectively a Greek and a German adventurer, who had en- 
tered the service of Abdul-Hamid and pleaded his cause more 
skilfully than any native Ottoman. The Greeks, Serbs, and 
Rumanians also had their delegates to press their national 
claims and grievances, but the real results of the conference 
came from four men — Beaconsfield, Bismarck, Andrassy, and 
Gortchakoff. 

Substantially speaking, the Treaty of San Stefano was 
attacked on the ground that the Great Bulgaria, proposed by 
it, denied the claims of Serbia and Greece to expansion and 
unduly curtailed the Turkish dominions in Europe; for the 
sultan, so urged his apologists, must surely be left enough 
land west of the Bosphorus still to be able to pass for an Eu- 
ropean power. But the readjustments were made very un- 
skilfully, with far greater care on the part of the opponents 
of Russia to prevent the wide extension of her power than 
to make any redistribution of the Balkan lands that would 



94 THE BOOTS OF THE WAR 

meet the reasonable demands of national hopes and inter- 
national justice. The principal points in the Treaty of Berlin 
can best be stated in summary : 

I. Some extensions were given to Serbia and Montenegro, 
but not so great as by the San Stef ano scheme ; and between 
the two South Slav countries was left wedged the "Sanjak 
of Novi-Bazar," a miserable little district now handed back 
to Turkey. 

II. Bosnia and Herzegovina were assigned to Austria, to 
be "occupied and administered" by her pending the restora- 
tion of their peace and prosperity. Theoretically, they were 
still part of Turkey. The Serbs and their kinsmen, the Bos- 
nians, were angered at this evidence that Bosnia was not to 
escape from the moribund sultan into the hands of Serbia, but 
was to become a spoil of lusty Austria. Still, the new ar- 
rangement was on paper and " temporary, ' ' and the South 
Slavs were to live in vain hopes for thirty years, until Austria 
destroyed the illusion by downright annexation. 

III. Greece was given a promise of an extension of her 
northern borders, a promise which the sultan was slow to ful- 
fill. It was only reluctantly and partially executed in 1881 
after severe pressure from the powers. However, for the 
great Island of Crete, with its large Hellenic population, 
Greece pleaded in vain. It was left for thirty-four years more 
of misrule and bondage. 

IV. In Asia Minor Russia was compelled to disgorge part 
of her conquests, although she retained the strong fortress of 
Kars. The sultan also solemnly engaged "to carry out, with- 
out further delay, the ameliorations and reforms demanded 
in the provinces (of) the Armenians, and to guarantee their 
security against the Circassians and Kurds." How Abdul- 
Hamid executed this binding promise will be told in a bloody 
sequel. 

V. The Great Bulgaria of San Stefano was flung into the 
scrap-heap. England would have none of it ; the proposed 
new state, in her opinion, would become merely a Russian 
satrapy. The proposed unit was therefore cut into three 
parts, each with a different fate: (a) The southern region, 



SICK MAN OF EUKOPE AND HIS SURGEONS 95 

especially Macedonia, was handed back to the sultan, to be 
oppressed by his myrmidons and its own factions until 1912, 
with a history miserable and bloody even beyond the run of 
Turkish provinces, (b) The northern regions, a "Small Bul- 
garia, ' ' were formed into an ' ' autonomous and tributary prin- 
cipality," practically clear of the sultan save for an annual 
tribute, to have a prince and constitution of its own. (c) 
Between Bulgaria and the Turkish dominions was to be an 
' ' autonomous province under the direct political and military 
authority of the sultan, ' ' but with a Christian governor named 
every five years. This new unit was Eastern Rumelia. It 
was a wholly artificial creation, its inhabitants being almost 
entirely Bulgars. Common sense, which often evades great 
diplomats, should have indicated that it could hardly exist 
long. 

VI. As a sop to Russia and as a reward to the czar's peo- 
ple for their sacrifices in a victorious war, it was confirmed 
that Bessarabia should be detached from Rumania and given 
to the Muscovites. The desolate Dobrudja seemed a poor 
enough recompense for this loss of a land inhabited almost 
strictly by Rumanians, and Prince Carol's ministers pleaded 
in vain against the change. To no purpose they invoked the 
memories of their faithful service at Plevna. Gortchakoff was 
inexorable, and Beaconsfield was not willing to risk a great 
war merely in behalf of an angry and outraged East Euro- 
pean people. The weaker power gloomily submitted, one of 
her statesmen uttering the naked truth that "it was not van- 
quished Turkey which paid Russia for the expenses of the 
war, but Rumania." Doubtless Alexander II was in sore 
need of some tangible annexations to satisfy Russian public 
opinion for the great sacrifices made in the conflict, but it was 
pitiful that the gain of Russia had to be her faithful ally's 
loss. This ungenerous act almost drove the Rumanians into 
a standing alliance with Germany and Austria. 

With these results, then, the great Congress of Berlin ad- 
journed, and Beaconsfield returned to London in fine feather, 
bringing, he told his applauding countrymen, "peace with 
honor, ' ' and also cynically asserting that he had ' ' consolidated 



96 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the Turkish Empire. - He had consolidated it by allowing 
Turkey to be two thirds expelled from Europe and by causing 
England herself to bag Cyprus ! The diplomatic wiseacres 
declared "peace and happiness were now assured to the Bal- 
kans." On the contrary, forty years' retrospect shows that 
few human arrangements were more short-sighted and trans- 
itory than this much-lauded Treaty of Berlin, when Beacons- 
field and Bismarck had made pawns of the peoples of 
Southeastern Europe. The unhappy results that presently 
developed were these : 

I. The Bosnian Question, which was thrust upon Serbia 
and Austria, became pregnant with almost certain war. 

II. Bulgaria was bound to reach out for Eastern Rumelia 
and then for an outlet upon the open sea — the iEgean. 

III. The failure to award Crete to Greece promised hot 
friction and probably a war between Greece and Turkey. 

IV. The return of Macedonia to the Turks implied that 
the miseries of that unhappy land should presently make it 
a veritable gunpowder factory for all Europe and indirectly 
for all the world. 

V. The action of Bismarck in favoring England and Aus- 
tria at the expense of Russia was to erect a barrier between 
Germany and Russia that was soon to develop into an enmity 
which, in its own turn, was likely to breed a world war. 

VI. By exacting Cyprus from Turkey as a reward for 
''protection," England destroyed the claims of gratitude she 
might have had upon the sultan. Abdul-Hamid clearly un- 
derstood that Great Britain had come to his rescue from no 
disinterested affection. From this time onward the diplo- 
matic influence of Great Britain at Constantinople waned. 

VII. By helping to secure the return of Macedonia and 
other regions to the Ottomans, by other friendly acts, and by 
exacting no territorial concessions in return, Germany con- 
vinced the Turks that in Tier there was a really powerful and 
unselfish friend. This was the beginning of a German influ- 
ence at Constantinople which twenty years later was to de- 
velop into mighty things. 

To sum up the story of the Berlin settlement: it was no 



SICK MAN OF EUROPE AND HIS SURGEONS 97 

settlement at all, merely a modus vivendi and armistice before 
the resumption of intrigues and battle. Russia was bound 
to resume her thrust southward for access to open water ; Tur- 
key was bound to give another exhibition of her unfitness to 
exist as a ruler of civilized men ; Austrian ambition was in no 
wise sated by the occupation of Bosnia ; and Greece, Rumania, 
Serbia, and Bulgaria were each left with unsatisfactory boun- 
daries and a particular burden of woe. Nobody left Berlin 
really satisfied, save Beaconsfield, and he was to die in 1881 — 
too soon to realize the imperfection of his vaunted achieve- 
ment. History will say of him that he had an imperial vision 
for Britain and that he was a master politician, but not that 
he was a world statesman. 

It is told that on the morrow of the signature of the treaty 
of Berlin, Bismarck sent for the Turkish representatives and 
said: "Well, gentlemen, you ought to be very much pleased. 
We have secured you a respite of twenty years. You have 
that period of grace in which to put your house in order. It 
is probably the last chance the Ottoman Empire will get, and 
of one thing I am pretty sure, you won't take it." 1 

Part of the seeds of the calamity of 1914 had been sown in 
1871, when Germany dictated an unjust treaty of peace to 
France. Another very large part, however, was sown in 
1878, when Beaconsfield and Bismarck imposed on the Near 
East not a real peace, but a most unsatisfactory truce. 

iMarriot's "The Eastern Question," p. 346. The story may be 
apocryphal, but falls in well with probabilities. 



CHAPTER VI 

BRITAIN IN EGYPT 

IN November, 1869, there was a great celebration in the bor- 
der-land between Egypt and Palestine. The Suez Canal 
had been opened. It had been built by the skill, persistence, 
and energy of a great French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, 
who had coaxed the money out of the financiers of Europe and 
overcome countless difficulties while conducting a vast enter- 
prise in an almost waterless desert-country. The fetes at the 
opening of the canal were magnificent. It was just before 
the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire. 
Napoleon III was still in power, but he was unable to leave 
France. He sent, however, his glittering Empress Eugenie, 
and there came, likewise, the Emperor of Austria, the Crown 
Prince of Prussia, and a Russian Grand Duke. The host of 
the occasion was the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha. 

The khedive was nominally only the viceroy of the Turkish 
sultan : actually he w T as an hereditary semi-independent prince. 
Ismail may have been Oriental enough in his personal habits, 
but he imitated his European guests in the magnificence of 
his hospitality. Nothing was too extreme for him, when it 
came to meeting the whims of his crowned visitors. The Em- 
press Eugenie expressed a desire to visit the pyramids of 
Gizeh. Almost instantly her host ordered ten thousand peas- 
ants, driven by the lash to forced labor under the broiling 
heat, to build a suitable road from Cairo seven miles out to 
the pyramids. The visitors, especially the French, were 
charmed by his hospitality, and if Napoleon III had remained 
in power, Ismail might have found a firm patron and protector 
in the Second Empire. Unfortunately, however, the next 
year Bismarck and Moltke sent Eugenie and Napoleon III flee- 
ing into exile. Ismail, therefore, had only his expenditures 
for his pains. 

98 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 99 

Egypt, about 1870, appeared to be a land with certain su- 
perficial Western improvements. There were European quar- 
ters in Cairo and Alexandria, a few European officials and 
''advisers" in the khedival service, and the beginnings of 
railroads, with sundry steamers on the Nile. The army wore 
tight uniforms of the Western type and carried Western 
rifles. There was a great deal of bad French and Italian 
chattered in the larger towns, but otherwise Egypt was still 
a decidedly unspoiled oriental Islamic country. The popula- 
tion was sunk in Eastern unprogressiveness and squalor; the 
system of government was practically that of Turkey, with the 
average Egyptian official a little more tyrannous and rapa- 
cious possibly than the average Ottoman official. Bribery 
was so common in the courts that a muftee who failed to grow 
rich by taking fees for his decisions was looked upon as an 
extraordinary man. Torture, bastinado, the clipping of ears, 
or other mutilations were standard penalties for petty of- 
fenses. The ruling classes rejoiced in the name of Turks, 
though they were often of native origin. There was a consid- 
erable number of Copts, native Christians, who by superior 
intelligence maintained a tolerable position. The great bulk 
of the population, however, were wretched fellahs, the most 
abject, downtrodden peasantry in the near East, direct de- 
scendants of the bondsmen of the ancient Pharaohs, with little 
but their religion altered and possibly subjected to the heaviest 
taxes anywhere in the world. Living in filthy mud-villages, 
ruled by the rhinoceros- whip of the khedive's tax-gatherers, 
dragged off frequently to forced labor on the Nile dikes, the 
roads, or other government works, they endured a lot beside 
which that of the late serf in Russia was enviable. 

Most execrable of all was the method of recruiting the khe- 
dive's army. Peasants were shackled together like convicts, 
dragged away from their villages by policemen, and shipped 
off to distant garrisons where they could not mutiny. There 
they were given guns and taught the forms of soldiering. 
They were seldom paid, were miserably fed, and very few ever 
saw their homes again. It is needless to say that this army 
was one of the most cowardly in all the world. 



100 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

In short, Egypt was a country in which the veneer of civ- 
ilization was very thin indeed. 

England watched Egypt with anxious interest. It con- 
trolled the route to India. English statesmen had beheld the 
development of French influence in the country with great 
anxiety and felt still greater anxiety because French capital 
and energy had directed the building of the Suez Canal. If 
there had been no Franco-Prussian War to ruin France, 
Frenchman and Briton might have clashed over Egypt ; as it 
turned out, France was weak, and England was content to 
leave Ismail in quasi-independence so long as he kept up the 
outward forms of orderly government, despite much grievous 
oppression. 

Ismail, however, with all the blood-money he extracted 
from his subjects, was fain to spend gold like a Croesus. All 
kinds of financial harpies and adventurers, such as abounded 
in the Levant, had fastened upon him. They filled his head 
with grandiose schemes for public works, whereon the money 
was squandered and nothing was accomplished. The khedive, 
too, had a harem of enormous proportions. The various 
houris thereof were one and all importunate for Paris cos- 
tumes, costly porcelain, precious jewels, elaborate furniture, 
and every other trickery which the West could foist upon the 
East. The khedive was as a child concerning European meth- 
ods, but a horde of "bankers" — French, German, and Jewish 
— assured him he was a Solomon in money-matters and got 
him to sign one authorization after another for a new issue of 
Egyptian bonds. Naturally, every person at the Cairo court 
had his hand in the treasury, and this regime was delightfully 
popular to the favored circle. Often the plundering was open 
and gross; and of Ismail it was well written that "he always 
contrived to obtain the least possible value for his expen- 
diture. ' ' 

In 1875 it was evident that the khedive 's financial exploits 
were nearing their climax. He then disposed of his last great 
asset, four million pounds' worth of shares in the new Suez 
Canal. The astute English prime minister, Disraeli, got wind 
of the fact that Ismail was trying to negotiate these shares in 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 101 

the Paris money-market, and before the French government 
or any other power could intervene he bought the whole block 
on his own authority for England and then got Parliament to 
ratify his act. Three English directors henceforth sat on 
the board of the canal company. Paris grumbled, but was 
helpless. England was tightening her grip on the all-im- 
portant road to India. 

This sale, however, did Ismail little good. He was at the 
end of his financial rope. In 1876 came a time when he could 
no longer borrow, even at most ruinous rates of usury. The 
result was that interest on the Egyptian debt was suspended. 
At first England refused to intervene, but when it became 
clear that France intended to force a thorough overhauling 
of the khedive's affairs, Britain decided to join with her. In 
1878, therefore, the pressure from the great powers led to the 
appointment of ministers who were directly under European 
influence and who could be relied upon to stop the financial 
disorder. But Ismail was not anxious thus to be allowed to 
reign, indeed, but no longer to govern. Early in 1879 he 
stirred up a mutiny in his own army, with the main object of 
compelling Nubar Pasha, a very enlightened Armenian, to 
resign as his prime minister. Ismail reckoned that France 
and England were too jealous of one another ever to agree on 
a scheme of actual coercion, but he failed to reckon on Ger- 
many. 

Bismarck's real motives are not very clear, but the chancellor 
speedily announced that the interests of certain German 
creditors made intervention necessary. The Turkish sultan 
took the hint. He was only too glad to show that, in name at 
least, the khedive was only a viceroy. On June 26, 1879, came 
a telegram from Constantinople to " Ismail Pasha, late 
Khedive of Egypt," informing his highness that his son ruled 
in his stead. 

Ismail did not struggle with destiny. He salaamed to 
Tewfik, his son and successor, and only stipulated that he 
should be allowed to depart to Naples with part of his harem. 
He was accommodated to the extent of being allowed to take 
some three hundred of his ladies with him. The tale is that 



102 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the unlucky and angered consorts who were not selected to de- 
part with their lord from Cairo, wrecked all the china, furni- 
ture, and draperies in the palace before he could depart with 
his chosen retinue. 

Ismail left Naples in 18&7 and went to Constantinople, but 
there Abdul-Hamid shrewdly held him as a kind of prisoner 
until his death in 1895, lest he escape back to Egypt and stir 
up a revolt. 

Tewfik thus "succeeded to a bankrupt state, an undisci- 
plined army, and a discontented people." France and Eng- 
land agreed on a scheme for dual control of the finances to 
pay off the vast debt, each of the two guardian powers naming 
some of the fiscal managers who were to try to introduce order 
into Ismail 's financial confusion. But the sight of Europeans 
taking virtual charge of Egyptian affairs kindled the anger of 
various native elements. There is not the slightest evidence 
that the despairing peasantry, on whom the burden of taxa- 
tion almost entirely fell, were anything but glad at any change 
which promised a little relief. Sundry army officers, how- 
ever, saw their fat posts in danger. In 1881 the regiments 
began to mutiny and to demand the dismissal of unpopular 
ministers, and in February, 1881, a certain Colonel Arabi, an 
upstart adventurer, by almost training guns upon the palace, 
forced the khedive to appoint him as war minister. 

If England and France could have agreed upon joint ac- 
tion to rid the khedive of this mutinous dictatorship, all might 
have been well. They did, indeed, send a joint note to Egypt, 
warning the native rulers that the mutineers were playing 
with fire and that a country dominating the Suez Canal could 
not be suffered to fall into anarchy. Each nation also sent a 
fleet to Alexandria, but France was very distrustful of Eng- 
land and feared to be made a cat 's paw by her old rival ; also 
at this moment there was a cabinet crisis in Paris and home 
politics made the French government weak and unwilling to 
embark on anything like war. 

Arabi and his irresponsible "Egypt for Egyptians" party 
soon forced the issue and compelled England to take action 
alone. On June 11, 1882, there was a serious massacre of 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 103 

Christians in Alexandria and the case for all the Europeans 
in Egypt became so threatening that a few days later over 
fourteen thousand of them fled the country, while many others 
anxiously awaited steamers. Arabi, who now felt very con- 
fident, next committed the blunder of beginning to build bat- 
teries wherewith to drive the British fleet from the harbor of 
Alexandria. This was too much for the British admiral. The 
French ships refused to assist him, but on July 11, 1882, his 
eight iron-clads opened fire. Ships against forts are prover- 
bially at a disadvantage, but Arabi 's gunners were wretched, 
and although the ships had some slight losses, they presently 
silenced all the batteries. The next day British troops and 
marines landed in the city, to stop the looting and murder by 
the mutineers. 

Arabi, however, remained still defiant. He had managed 
to keep the obedience and loyalty of his men, and by holding 
the khedive in semi-captivity pretended to retain the forms of 
lawful authority. In England there was a Liberal cabinet, 
headed by Mr. Gladstone. The ministry was very loath to 
let itself be diverted from its long program of domestic re- 
forms by any kind of foreign adventure. But Arabi was now 
in a mood to make a drive at the Suez Canal and to menace 
the precious route to India. Besides, his rule in Egypt prom- 
ised nothing but outrage and anarchy. Prance was still too 
hesitant and too fearful of a sudden thrust from Germany 
to be willing to send an army. Italy sent good wishes, but 
did not care to do any fighting. There was nothing for it 
but for England either to present Egypt to Arabi or to drive 
him out, and the Gladstone ministry was not pacifistic enough 
to refuse a plain national duty. 

Early in September the British, led by the queen's ablest 
general, Lord Wolseley, landed a small army of their best old- 
style professional troops at Ismailia on the Suez Canal. Ar- 
abi had been expecting an attack near Alexandria, but now he 
assembled his forces, somewhat skilfully, to meet the invaders. 
There was only one battle — at Tel-el-Kebir. At dawn on 
September 13, thirteen thousand British regulars struck twice 
as many Egyptians supported by seventy cannon. There was 



104 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

a volley or two, and some hard fighting on the summit of the 
Egyptian intrenchments ; then the miserable fellah infantry 
broke and ran. The British cavalry chased them furiously, 
merrily slapping the runaways from behind with the flat of 
their sabres and soon transforming the whole native army into 
a flying rabble. All the Egyptian guns were taken. There 
had never been a more complete victory. Sundry tales of this 
battle have a comic-opera flavor. It is said that many of 
Arabi's officers and men stripped off their uniforms and strove 
to escape capture by working in the fields as peaceful agricul- 
turalists; or that they endeavored to pile into a railway train 
standing ready in their rear, but were all captured when a 
single British trooper rode up and shot the engineer, since 
no Egyptian had skill enough to start the locomotive. 

The last courage oozed out of the khedival army, and when 
the next day five hundred English horsemen, after a furious 
ride, appeared before Cairo, eleven thousand native troops, 
with a strong citadel, surrendered after hardly a shot. On 
September 19 the "Official Journal" of Cairo appeared with 
a laconic decree of the khedive, "The Egyptian army is dis- 
banded" — a significant story in few words. England was 
fairly grasping Egypt, the key to the East and to India. 

No enemjr of Britain would believe the statement, but nev- 
ertheless it was a fact that the island empire was not anxious 
to retain possession of this old land of Rameses and Cleopatra. 
The Gladstone cabinet contained a large element that was al- 
most fanatically opposed to anything like conquest and ag- 
gressive war. John Bright, the great radical leader, had re- 
signed from it in July, 1882, rather than seem to give consent 
to Lord Wolseley's expedition. Less extreme Englishmen 
realized that to retain their grip on Egypt meant to enrage 
France, which, since Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion, had re- 
garded the country as in one sense her own. It would also 
seem a direct slap at Russia in her pressure southward, and 
would estrange the Turks, who still considered Egypt as an 
outlying paskalik. Italy and Austria, likewise, as hopeful 
Mediterranean powers, would hardly be pleased. Only Ger- 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 105 

many, curiously enough, seemed wholly quiescent. Bis- 
marck 's shrewd lips hardly concealed his satisfaction at a turn 
which seemed to set France and England permanently asun- 
der. 

Nevertheless, it was soon perfectly clear that, after seizing 
the Egyptian bunch of nettles, to drop it would be hard. In 
Cairo the bulk of the natives did not hide their delight at the 
coming of the British troops, and two thousand six hundred 
European residents of Alexandria signed a petition in favor 
of permanent occupation. Lord Granville, the statesman in 
charge, announced, indeed, that "he contemplated shortly 
commencing the withdrawal of the British troops from 
Egypt," but when attempts were made to untangle the situa- 
tion and to put Tewfik in a position to rule firmly and pro- 
gressively, the case seemed almost hopeless. There was really 
no effective native element to fall back upon. Arabi was tried 
for treason and banished to Ceylon, but what was to prevent 
another adventurer from doing his bloody work all over again ? 
The vast debt accumulated by Ismail was still unpaid. It wag 
needful to put Egyptian finances under a competent British 
expert, Sir Auckland Colvin. This of course was followed by 
the discovery that the whole internal administration of the 
country was hopelessly rotten. The canal system and the 
control of irrigation from the Nile had been allowed to run 
down, so that much arable land was reverting to desert, thus, 
of course, reducing the whole food supply of the country. 
The khedive, therefore, had to receive the authoritative "ad- 
vice" to put his four important departments of irrigation, 
army, justice, and police under the charge of British agents. 
He was also told to prohibit the bastinado for extorting con- 
fessions in the courts, hitherto an indispensable part of about 
every Egyptian trial. On top of these changes, the cholera 
broke out to claim its thousands, and the British medical men 
found themselves helpless to check the scourge, so long as na- 
tive officials stubbornly refused to carry out their suggestions. 
There was nothing for it, despite much talk of an early with- 
drawal, but to defer the announced evacuation. Sir Evelyn 
Baring (later Lord Cromer), an administrator of remarkable 



106 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

tact and ability, was stationed at Cairo in 1883 as " agent' ' 
and consul-general. At convenient call there was a small but 
reliable body of British troops, usually some six thousand men. 
Baring 's position nominally was only that of adviser and next 
friend to His* Highness the Khedive; actually, his advice was 
of a kind that it would have cost Tewlik his vicegeral throne 
to have disobeyed. Baring thus took his post in September, 
1883. He left it in 1907. The evacuation of Egypt, despite 
the scowls and even the menaces of France, was seemingly to 
take place at ' ' the Greek kalends, ' ' which is to say, never. 

Hardly were the British in full possession of Cairo than a 
new factor arose to plague them and to render evacuation dif- 
ficult. Ismail and his predecessors had conquered in a par- 
tial, haphazard way a huge province south of Egypt along the 
upper Nile, and were reaching into the heart of Africa almost 
to the great Nyanza lakes, whence issues the mighty river. 
This Equatoria was a most ill-compacted territory of half- 
naked head-hunters, uncouth desert tribes, negroes, "Arabs" 
(i.e., partly negroid Mohammedans), etc. Its government 
was utterly feeble; its commerce was almost exclusively in 
slaves and ivory. Only at the capital, Khartoum, was there 
something like a civilized community, a collection of Levan- 
tine traders, a few government buildings, and fairly regular 
communications with the north. The cataracts in the Nile, 
however, made through traffic by steamer impossible, and there 
was as yet no railway system. Equatoria, in short, was a mis- 
governed, inchoate block on the map, containing mostly sav- 
ages, hippopotami, and desert or jungle. It added nothing 
to the strength and glory of its nominal master, the khedive. 

When Tewfik's power began to be shaken in the north by 
Arabi, and when the empty treasury made it almost impossible 
to pay the Egyptian garrisons, the khedive 's power in this 
vast "province" quickly evaporated. A mahdi (messiah) 
arose in 1881. His methods were obviously an imitation of 
those of Mohammed, but he declared war impartially on Mos- 
lems and Christians. 1 He would conquer all Egypt, then 

i Mahdism seems to have borne about the same crude resemblance to 
Islam that Mormonism presented to Christianity. 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 107 

Constantinople, then the rest of the world, and finally enforce 
a new religion. The tribes of the Sudan followed him by the 
thousands. He was able to inspire his converts with the im- 
plicit conviction that those who fell fighting in his cause sped 
straight to paradise. The result was that they rushed into 
battle swinging their scimitars with all the fanaticism of the 
first converts to Islam. 

The dissolution of authority in Egypt in 1882 left the 
Mahdi free to make headway in Equatoria. In 1883 the 
slowly reorganizing Egyptian government tried to do some- 
thing to check him, but England refused to send troops. 
Equatoria, declared Lord Granville, was no concern of Brit- 
ain's. As a consequence, an Egyptian army, described as a 
"worthless rabble of Nile fellahs," was sent against the mes- 
siah. The general was Hicks Pasha, a brave Englishman in 
the khedival service, but very few reliable men followed him. 
Hicks 's forces wandered into the desert until almost crazed 
by thirst, and then were attacked and massacred nearly to a 
man by the Mahdi. 

Soon all that was left of Equatoria were a few hard-pressed 
garrisons and especially the town of Khartoum. The English 
ministers were resolved to evacuate the Sudan, for to hold it 
was beyond the power of the khedive, and they had no ambi- 
tion to station a British army in the heart of Africa. But the 
loyal garrisons had to be rescued, and in 1884 General Charles 
George Gordon, a British soldier of fortune of a remarkably 
attractive personal type, was sent out to the Sudan with or- 
ders to bring the garrison and foreigners away in safety. 
Gordon had caught the imagination of England by his sur- 
prisingly winsome character and by his robust faith in Chris- 
tianity. He had been before in the Sudan in the khedival 
service, and the natives loved and trusted him. It was sup- 
posed he was to arrange promptly for the evacuation of Khar- 
toum, but there is no doubt that he was made to feel that very 
much was left to his discretion. Certain, he was treated when 
he left England as if he had carte blanche to untangle a per- 
plexing situation. ' ' Lord Granville took the general 's ticket ; 
Lord Wolseley carried his hand-bag; the Duke of Cambridge 



108 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

held open the door of the railway carriage." Gordon reached 
Cairo in January, 1884, and proceeded to Khartoum. Very 
soon it appeared that he was unable to arrange promptly for 
the evacuation. 

To this day it is a moot question just why Gordon failed to 
get away from Khartoum. Since he perished there, his own 
detailed story was never told, although he managed to send 
through his despatches from time to time explaining his posi- 
tion. The probability is that, once on the ground, he felt it 
outrageous to abandon a great region, and especially many 
native tribes who were friendly to Egypt and the Europeans, 
to the cruel mercies of their foe, the Mahdi. Presently it be- 
came evident that Gordon could not himself leave Khartoum, 
even if he would. He was closely besieged in the city, with a 
small loyal garrison and a few Europeans and friendly na- 
tives, by a horde of fanatics thirsting for his blood, and the 
English advisers in Cairo began bombarding London with 
telegrams urging a prompt expedition up the Nile to save him 
from destruction. 

A Nile expedition was one of the last things the pacifist 
Gladstone ministry desired. It implied a further dip into the 
unwelcome Egyptian adventure. There was a strong dispo- 
sition to believe that Gordon could escape if he only wished 
to, and therefore to leave him to his fate. But Gordon was a 
hero to half of England. Countless voices were raised in his 
behalf. His case entered politics. Very reluctantly, there- 
fore, Mr. Gladstone's cabinet ordered an expedition under 
Lord Wolseley to ascend the river and rescue Khartoum. It 
was a difficult advance, now across the desert, now portaging 
boats around the boiling cataracts. A contingent of Cana- 
dian voyageurs was used to navigate the Nile rapids. At last 
the final dash was made. On January 28, 1885, the head of the 
expedition came in sight of Khartoum. Their steamers were 
then met with a heavy fire. The whole town was evidently in 
the hands of armed barbarians. Two days earlier Gordon, 
who had held out until his garrison had been fed on crushed 
palm-fiber and gum, had been overpowered and slain. Thus 
the entire Sudan had passed into the power of the Mahdi. 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 109 

There was nothing for it but to retire. "Wolseley's force 
was too small to break the Mahdi's power and avenge Gordon, 
but great was the sorrow of England. It was felt, and not 
unjustly, that the Gladstone ministry had almost deliberately 
sacrificed the heroic general by its cold-blooded procrastina- 
tion in not sending the relief expedition until it was too late. 
In the next parliamentary elections this dissatisfaction over 
the casting away of Gordon was a large factor in the balloting 
which drove Mr. Gladstone from power. 1 

The new Conservative (Salisbury) ministry, which took 
the reins in 1885, had too many problems, however, to under- 
take to crush the Mahdi merely for the sentimental satisfaction 
of avenging Gordon. A garrison was placed on the southern 
confines of Egypt, and it was not hard to keep the fanatics 
from penetrating north. The Sudan relapsed temporarily to 
degenerate barbarism. 

But if the Sudan was thus abandoned, Egypt could not be 
abandoned. Only the inveterate foes of England have been 
able to deny that to have returned the country to its native 
rulers would have been to blast the chances of the miserable 
peasantry ever seeing better days. If England had with- 
drawn, some other power would have cheerfully assumed at 
least this part of "the white man's burden"; and no British 
government was able to permit a rival nation to camp itself 
on the route to India. In general, the English did not abol- 
ish the native administration. At the elbow of the khedive 
was the all-powerful consul-general and "Adviser," whose 
word was law to the Cairo garrison and therefore to His High- 
ness himself. Behind each one of the khedival ministers 
were yet other British advisers, whose suggestions usually 
amounted to mandates. The country was terribly poor. The 
French, angry enough at the English occupation, insisted on 
the scrupulous discharge of the huge debt. Only by a great 
effort and a most skilful piece of financiering was the country 
rescued from bankruptcy and a little surplus accumulated for 

1 The Liberals had styled their leader the "G. O. M.," i. e., the "Grand 
Old Man." Their Conservative opponents declared the letters meant 
"Gordon's Only Murderer." The parody stuck long. 



110 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

public works and reforms. In 1888, for the first time, the 
treasury books balanced, and then came steady improvement. 
The cruel corves (forced labor system) for keeping up the Nile 
canals were abolished, and decent wages were paid to the 
toiling fellahs. The irrigation and agricultural systems were 
improved, something like efficient schools were introduced, and 
peasants capable of enterprise and thrift learned that they 
w r ere not to be ruinously taxed and plundered by a rapacious 
government, just as soon as they displayed a little prosperity. 
Justice could no longer be purchased in the courts. Wise su- 
pervision trebled the cotton crop and the sugar crop. A rail- 
way was built along the Nile, and last, but not least, by means 
of certain great dams and reservoirs, especially the magnifi- 
cent dam at Assouan at the southern end of Egypt proper, it 
was made possible to increase enormously the amount of land 
irrigated by the Nile, and so to reclaim millions of acres of 
arable fields from the desert. 

Another reform of a very different kind was that of the 
native army. The old-line khedival troops were probably as 
inefficient wretches as ever disgraced a uniform. Now, under 
British auspices, soldiers were no longer collected by dragging 
them off in chain-gangs; but a small contingent was more 
peaceably enlisted and the men "to their astonishment found 
themselves well fed, well clothed, unbeaten, paid punctually, 
and even allowed furloughs to visit their families." These 
new troops proved reliable against the Sudanese dervishes, 
and gradually their force was increased and army service be- 
came popular. By 1897 the reformed Egyptian army had 
reached such efficiency and the treasury was so well prepared 
to stand an extra strain that, with a little help from England, 1 
it was determined to try to reconquer the Sudan. 

The Mahdi, the self-appointed messiah, had long since per- 
ished. In 1885 he had wronged a woman, who took vengeance 
by administering to the prophet a lingering poison from which 
he expired after eight days of prolonged agony. Supersti- 

i The British Government loaned Egypt eight hundred thousand 
pounds at only two and three-quarters per cent., also a sufficient force 
of British regulars to give a good stiffening to the army. 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 111 

tions, however, died hard in the land of fanatics. A favorite 
lieutenant of the Mahdi now proclaimed himself "Khalifa" 
(successor) in his stead, and he speedily gained complete as- 
cendency over the semi-negroes of the Sudan. Tens of thou- 
sands of swarthy dervishes, convinced that death in the holy 
war opened the portals of paradise, obeyed his summons. 1 
His chieftains were men of a good deal of military ability. 
An attack upon his power was nothing to be attempted lightly. 

In 1897 there was preliminary fighting, preparation, and 
clearing of the frontier posts. In 1898 the real advance on 
Khartoum began. The expedition was supposed to be con- 
ducted jointly by the British and the Egyptian governments, 
under the common command of the "Sirdar" (general-in- 
chief). Sir Herbert Kitchener, a British leader who had al- 
ready won a marked reputation. The whole expeditionary 
force amounted to about twenty-three thousand, with ten gun- 
boats and five transport-steamers on the Nile. A great part 
of the difficulty lay in getting around the cataracts and in 
building railways across several short-cuts through the desert 
where the river made a great detour. At last, on September 
1, 1898, the army had worked close to Omdurman itself, only 
two miles north of Khartoum, and there it met the host of the 
Khalifa, all in battle-array. 

It was a picturesque, hideously spectacular battle, a battle 
between aggressive civilization and embattled barbarism, such 
as when Cortes flung his strange and terrible horsemen upon 
the redoubtable Aztecs. The dervishes far outnumbered their 
enemies. They formed a crescent around the Anglo-Egyp- 
tians, then charged in solid battalions, roaring their pious in- 
vocations to Allah and bent on sweeping the invaders back into 
the Nile. The Sirdar's cannon tore gaps in them, but they 
came forward, "never slackening their advance, except when 

i The khalifa would regale his followers with tales such as that in a 
vision the late Mahdi had given him "an oblong-shaped light" which, in 
turn, had been transmitted by the Angel Gabriel directly from God 
Almighty. Hearers who did not believe such sayings were promptly 
silenced by torture or death. A pretentious mosque was erected at 
Omdurman over the Mahdi's grave, and miracles were claimed to be 
worked at it. 



112 THE HOOTS OF THE WAR 

groups halted to discharge their muskets at impossible ranges. 
Waving their nags and intoning their prayers, the dervishes 
charged on in utter scorn of death, but when their ranks came 
within range of musketry tire, they went down like grass un- 
der the scythe." Here and there the dervishes almost came 
to grips with their foes, but nowhere was their headlong valor 
able to get them through the zone of death made by the maga- 
zine-rifles. By eleven o'clock Kitchener could order a general 
advance. The remnants of the fanatics now broke and fled. 
The Khalifa, doubting his own pledges of paradise, escaped 
on a swift dromedary. About ten thousand of his followers 
had perished outright. Very many more died of their 
wounds. The remnant of the army was scattered. Kitchener 
entered triumphantly into Omdurman and then Khartoum, 
and there, opposite the ruins of the palace where Gordon had 
met his doom, the British regiments paraded, a chaplain read 
the funeral service, and the assembly sang the fallen hero's 
hymn, "Abide With Me." Thirteen years had gone by, but 
Gordon had been well avenged. 

The Khalifa was destined to wander, a discredited fugitive, 
for nearly a year before he was cut off and slain with his band, 
but his power had ended with the battle. Equatoria, or more 
properly now the Sudan, had been restored to civilized in- 
fluences and "peaceful penetration," nominally under the 
joint administration of Egypt and Britain. By 1914 Khar- 
toum had become a fairly sanitary and sophisticated commu- 
nity, with a railway, hotels, and shops, and was regularly in- 
cluded in the Cook tourist system. Such is the prosaic anti- 
climax of the Battle of Omdurman. 

The Sudan, however, came near being the occasion of a far 
greater war than that with the Khalifa. Hardly was Kitch- 
ener fairly in possession of Khartoum than he learned with as- 
tonishment that six white men and one hundred African 
troops were in possession of Fashoda, a village on the White 
Nile, three hundred miles to the south. The Sirdar hastened 
down in person. He found there the French major, Mar- 
chand, who, with a very small force, had been for two years 
heroically battling his way across deserts, swamps, moun- 



BRITAIN IN EGYPT 113 

tains, and rapids from the French west coast of Africa to 
these headwaters of the Nile. There he expected to plant the 
flag of France permanently, and to hold it against Britain and 
all the world. Had the Anglo-Egyptian expedition been a lit- 
tle later, very possibly he might have succeeded. 

As it was, however, although Marchand stoutly refused to 
haul down the French flag at Kitchener's orders and said he 
would die first at his post, both officers had the common sense 
not to come to blows, but to refer the case to London and 
Paris. Lord Salisbury's government at once took a stiff at- 
titude. The victory of Omdurman, it announced, had put 
them in control of the whole Nile Valley and had given them 
all the lands claimed by the Khalifa, including Fashoda. The 
French were angry, and if they could have persuaded them- 
selves that their navy was a match for England's, they might 
have refused to recall Marchand and so have forced the fight- 
ing. But with their smaller fleet they felt helpless, especially 
as Franco-German relations at the time were bad. Marchand 
returned to Paris, to be praised, lionized, and feted. He was 
a brave and resourceful man who just missed winning a great 
reward. 

This Fashoda incident, needless to say, was intensely humil- 
iating to France, and for several years made her relations with 
England very bitter. No person reading the Paris or London 
papers of October, 1898, could have imagined that 1914 would 
see Gaul and Briton in hearty alliance. So much could the 
common dread of Germany avail to suppress old grudges ! 

By 1914, Egypt, thanks to English supervision, had become 
a transformed country. It was prosperous, progressive, and, 
for an Oriental land, reasonably clean. To the great Sir 
Evelyn Baring (later Lord Cromer), Egypt owed a large part 
of the success of the new regime. Cromer deserves to rank 
among the very wisest and best of the British proconsuls. 
The bulk of Egypt's people were contented with the new 
regime and recognized its benefits. There was, indeed, a party 
of Egyptian Nationalists which clamored noisily for the with- 
drawal of the English and for large political rights. They 



114 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

represented only a number of seini-educated natives who hun- 
gered for public office. The majority of the people took abso- 
lutely no interest in politics and were content with any gov- 
ernment, so long as it was beneficent, and a beginning had 
already been made of setting up a council of native repre- 
sentatives. 

The political condition of the country was anomalous, how- 
ever. Theoretically, the British occupation was only tempo- 
rary, the khedive being the vassal not of George V, but of the 
Turkish sultan, since the British "advisers" were mere so- 
journers who might at any moment depart. Practically, how- 
ever, everybody knew that England had come to stay. Since 
1904 France had formally agreed not to urge her old rival to 
fix a date for quitting the country. However, the great em- 
pire which was ever more intent upon becoming England's 
successor to world power had fastened eager eyes upon Egypt. 
In scores of writings the Pan-Germans indicated their belief 
that Egypt was Britain's " Achilles 's heel," the capture 
whereof would topple over her entire dominion. Therefore a 
cardinal part of their program was to cultivate friendship 
with the Turk, as being, among other things, the master of the 
land route in attacking Egypt; and another part of their 
plotting was to stimulate disaffection and even rebellion among 
the Egyptian nationalists. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 

THE year 1913 and the first half of the year 1914 found 
the world entertaining the most discouraging opinions 
concerning the French people and their republic. France 
seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into a miry rut. The 
casual newspaper reader was aware that ministries in the 
French government were as unstable as ever. Every minis- 
try had clearly stamped upon it from its very beginning the 
symptoms of discord and disintegration. Corruption, too, 
was charged as frequently as ever before, while scandal seemed 
in France to be inseparable from things political. At this 
time it happened to be the Caillaux trial which filled the news- 
papers, but this scandal differed from others in French repub- 
lican history only in details. Behind the sharp, sinister lines 
in the foreground of this picture, those persons who traveled 
abroad and were better read were able to fill in a background 
of hazy, gray details. Everywhere there was incompetence 
and inefficiency in administration; there were too many offi- 
cers to do a little work, and always too much red tape. The 
industrial progress of France was slow compared to that of her 
neighbors ; her population, due to a declining birth-rate, was 
practically stationary. Freakish tendencies in French art 
pointed almost to mental degeneracy, while the great produc- 
tion of cheap French novels, available in every city in the 
world, proved to many a prudish traveler that the licentious- 
ness of the Parisian demi-monde was infecting the very sources 
of literary production in France. 

Viewed as a whole, the picture was a gloomy one, and most 
people had accepted for it the easiest explanation. The 
French, they said, were a decadent nation. Indeed, the 
phrase "decadent France" was to be found very commonly 
in books and in magazines, being often used even by people of 

115 



116 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

information and judgment. Just what was meant by deca- 
dent was not entirely clear. Some interpreted it as meaning 
that France had run her course in history, that her people 
were "played out," and that as a consequence France would 
be of ever-diminishing importance in world affairs. Others 
seem to have thought of it as meaning that the French had be- 
come a godless and immoral people. No doubt other mean- 
ings were possible. It became habitual for writers, even 
among the best friends of France, to speak of the " decay" or 
the "decline" of this and that in France, instead of thinking 
of the rise of its opposite. Thus Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, himself 
no believer in the idea that France was decadent, allowed him- 
self to entitle an excellent essay, "The Decay of Idealism in 
France," a title which suggested more than he meaut. He 
was thinking of the changes in the direction of hedonism and 
realism brought about in France by the mechanical age, 
changes which were paralleled in England at an earlier age 
and in Germany at about the same time as in France. The 
industrial revolution had, indeed, changed letters and think- 
ing and social customs in England no less than it was doing 
more slowly in France. 

Howbeit, France was in 1914 "decadent France," and in 
1916, if not slightly earlier, "splendid France." This is the 
paradox which must be solved. In the course of two years 
the world almost completely changed its opinion about the 
French. Now the way in which this change in our thinking 
was brought about is clear to all who have really lived during 
the past three years. The German war-machine, held up for a 
few precious days in August, 1914, near the Belgian boundary, 
soon broke away and began to roll down upon France. Ap- 
parently the French military authorities had really expected 
Germany to respect her treaty concerning Belgium, and were 
not prepared for the thrust through that country. But the 
machine rolled on. Brussels fell, and later Antwerp. Soon 
the German columns were crossing the French frontier with 
apparently irresistible force. The French and English to- 
gether were unable to check the movement. An appalling 
quiet seemed to have settled upon France. The few items of 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 117 

news which filtered out were not reassuring. As the Germans 
drew near Paris, the seat of the government was hastily re- 
moved to Bordeaux. Paris, yes, Prance itself, seemed doomed. 
Another debacle like that of 1870 was imminent, to be followed 
by a peace made on French soil with the victorious invader. 

Then came that miracle of modern warfare, the Battle of 
the Marne. The French armies, defeated and flung back 
upon their own soil, turned and defeated the invader, driving 
him back toward Belgium. Whether or not German military 
mistakes were partly responsible for this defeat, certain it is 
that the glory due France cannot be overstated. Then it was 
that the world began to change its mind about the French and 
to speak some words of commendation. We began to look 
somewhat below the surface, and as we did, we saw things long 
unsuspected. France, caught unprepared for war, compelled 
by the perfidy of the enemy to change her whole plan of de- 
fensive campaign, had in the course of a few weeks, with great 
courage and orderliness, accepted early defeats and retreat, 
had continued to gather more troops and to place them 
quietly where they could be most effectively used, and then, 
on the darkest day, had put in operation a plan of battle which 
in a few days drove the enemy far from his objective. But 
it was perhaps not so much of the Battle of the Marne as 
Verdun which finally changed our opinion of the French. 
The undying heroism of the French troops in those awful days 
remade France in our eyes, Germany undertook to bleed 
France white in that battle, and the French accepted the chal- 
lenge. The end we know. France held Verdun, and when 
the time came she regained in a few short, decisive battles all 
that German arms had taken from her at such terrible cost, 

However, to state the paradox is not to explain it. Why 
was the world so deceived in France before 1914? If France 
was not really decadent, why did that idea get abroad, and 
how explain some of the phenomena which seem to justify 
that conclusion? The answer is that phenomena must be ex- 
plained according to their time, their place, and the accom- 
panying circumstances, not always taken at their face value. 
Furthermore, they must be studied with sympathy for the 



118 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

subject, not with hostility. The following short but sympa- 
thetic account of France under the Third Republic may be of 
value to an understanding of France as she really is. 

The Third French Republic dates from September 4, 1870. 
It has enjoyed a life far longer than any previous regime in 
France since 1789. From 1852 until his overthrow in 1870 
Napoleon III had ruled over France as head of the Second 
Empire. He began his reign by destroying the republic es- 
tablished in 1848, and for the first ten years of his rule he 
evinced little regard for the rights and wishes of the people. 
Beginning, however, in 1860 he was compelled more and more 
to seek their support — a sure sign of decline in an autocrat. 
In 1859 and 1860 he alienated the affections of a large part of 
the clerical party in France by the aid he had given in driving 
Austria from Italy and incidentally in undermining the tem- 
poral power of the pope. In order not to lose this support 
entirely, he despatched to Rome a French guard to sustain 
the papal authority there. In 1866 Prussia defeated Austria 
and made herself head of the German Confederation, while 
Italy was able to annex Yenetia and Venice. In the next year 
came the final failure of the Mexican expedition. Thus, while 
France stood still or went backward, Germany and Italy were 
consolidating and expanding their powers. The comparison 
was exceedingly painful to Frenchmen, who were not a little 
jealous of both their neighboring rivals. The splendors of 
the Universal Exposition in Paris, 1867, though dazzling, did 
not blind the French nation to the facts. 

The republican party, though small during the middle years 
of the Second Empire, had never forgiven Kapoleon the coup 
d'etat whereby he overturned the republic. As his govern- 
ment grew weaker and less successful in the late 'sixties, they 
took advantage of his rising unpopularity to come out openly 
in condemnation of him. Leon Gambetta, French citizen but 
the son of an Italian grocer of Cahors, was most outspoken of 
them all. He publicly declared that the coup d'etat would be 
revenged. 

To silence criticism, several courses of action short of abdi- 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 119 

cation were open to Napoleon. He might use stern repressive 
measures, or lie might liberalize his rule, or he might win back 
the people's confidence by a successful war, for, after all, the 
chief objection to him, outside of the small group of republi- 
cans, was his failure to hold up France's head among the na- 
tions. Repression might have led to rebellion and civil war. 
He chose the second expedient first, and in the course of the 
years 1867-70 he had enacted the laws creating the so-called 
"Liberal Empire." This sign of yielding, far from satisfying 
the growing republican party, made their demonstrations even 
bolder than before. The next expedient was war, and Prance 
soon learned that Napoleon was not averse to trying it. 

This is no place to speak of the suicidal war of the Second 
Empire with Prussia. The fatal reverse of Sedan came on 
September 2, 1870, and the news reached Paris late the next 
clay. That night the legislative bod} 7 held a meeting just long 
enough to receive the evil news. The army caught at Sedan 
had been compelled to surrender to the enemy, and the em- 
peror with them. Jules Favre took a few minutes to propose 
the dissolution of the empire and the establishment of a tem- 
porary government, but the Corps Legislatif adjourned till 
the day following. When it met on that memorable Sunday, 
the fourth of September, the excited Paris crowd filled the halls 
and galleries. In irresistible tones it demanded the establish- 
ment of a republic. The government leaders, henchmen of 
Napoleon, were confused and at a loss what to do. Gambetta 
and Jules Favre, popular idols both, tried to quiet the people 
so that business might proceed, but all in vain. At last, when 
stubbornness was no longer a virtue, they yielded, Gambetta 
first, then Favre, both crying, "Yes, long live the Republic!" 
Soon after they appeared at the Hotel de Ville, heading a 
motley throng, to proclaim the dissolution of the empire and 
the establishment of a republic. This was revolution, nothing 
less, affecting the lives of millions of Frenchmen, but brought 
about by a few thousand Parisians. It was a quiet and easy 
revolution, comparatively, and without immediate bloodshed. 
The republic then and thus proclaimed lives to this day. 



120 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

During the following months Paris was besieged, while 
Gambetta vainly but valiantly organized opposition in the 
south. At last the city capitulated and further resistance be- 
came useless. A National Assembly, chosen almost without 
any official pressure, was called together at Bordeaux to ratify 
the terms of peace, which were being worked out by Thiers for 
the French government, and the Prussian leaders. Having fin- 
ished this bitter task, and having heard the heartbreaking tinal 
farewell of the members from the relinquished departments of 
Alsace and Lorraine, the National Assembly continued to sit 
for the purpose of reorganizing the shattered finances and for 
rehabilitating the economic and political life of the republic. 

For, be it remembered, in the years following 1870 France 
continued to be a republic not by common consent but be- 
cause no party was strong enough to overthrow it. Few tried 
to reestablish the empire, and but few thought seriously of it. 
Yet, while the form was republican and Thiers was soon made 
the first president, a large majority of the National Assembly 
were in favor of another form, namely, monarchy. It was 
sometimes called a t; Republic without Republicans." Thiers 
himself, an old man who had served under the July monarchy, 
which was overthrown in 1848, at first favored the monarchical 
form. Herein lay great danger for France. Swayed by the 
brilliant speeches of Gambetta and a few other republican 
leaders, who went about their propaganda with tireless zeal, 
thousands of Frenchmen were daily coming around to repub- 
lican views. The National Assembly, however, which showed 
no signs of a desire to dissolve and hold a new election, was 
monarchist in its leanings. Had the monarchists been able to 
agree on a candidate, France might have been changed once 
more into a monarchy. But the candidates for the crown were 
two, representing different branches of the ancient ruling 
house, and between them the monarchists in the Assembly 
were fairly evenly divided. The negotiations for an agree- 
ment between the rival pretenders were at first conducted suc- 
cessfully, but the more eligible of the two, the Comte de 
Chambord, showed an exceeding vanity. He thought himself 
so indispensable to France that it would take him on any 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 121 

terms. He insisted, even, that France should accept the white 
flag of the old monarchy, abolishing the beloved tricolor of the 
Revolution. Such conditions were, of course, impossible, and 
when at last the Assembly could delay no longer to establish a 
permanent regime for France, enough monarchists had been 
converted to a republic, or were at least willing to swallow 
their pride and stifle their scruples, to give a majority to the 
so-called "constitutional laws" of 1875. 

To the passage of these laws both Gambetta and Thiers con- 
tributed in different ways. The republic which the monar- 
chists mainly feared was the "red republic," governed by the 
rabble and the socialists, the republic in which life and prop- 
erty w>re without protection. They bethought themselves 
with trembling of the "Reign of Terror" and of the Commune 
of 1871. But Gambetta himself was of the bourgeois class, the 
middle class of professional men and small merchants, and he 
daily gave evidence that he was not a convinced and inflexible 
radical, impervious to argument and reason, but rather an op- 
portunist who was even willing to accept some monarchical 
features with his republic. Thiers, on the other hand, soon 
saw that the monarchists were hopelessly divided, while if 
either faction should win, it would merely mean a prolongation 
of strife in France. He came out, therefore, for a republic, 
as the form which "divides us least." Indeed, thoughout 
his short term as president he proved to France that republics, 
too, can respect property and suppress disorder without 
mercy. Thus there came about a gradual meeting of minds. 
The republic was, indeed, confirmed by the National Assembly 
without enthusiasm, but it was necessary to France and it had 
to come. 

The present republican constitution of France is grounded 
firmly in the principle of popular sovereignty. The Chamber 
of Deputies of the French parliament is chosen by manhood 
suffrage, and so is every important district and municipal 
council in the republic. To Gambetta, indeed, universal suf- 
frage was a sort of political first principle. Give the people 
the suffrage, he reasoned, and all other good things would fol- 



122 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

low. Furthermore, it was final. Monarchs and emperors can 
abdicate, and are always in danger of being overthrown. But 
1 ' universal suffrage cannot abdicate, ' ' and therefore when the 
republic arrived, it came to stay. 

Upon this foundation of manhood suffrage the constitution- 
makers of 1875 reared a republican form of government cor- 
responding as closely as possible to the English limited mon- 
archy. The Chamber of Deputies is a large body, elected di- 
rectly by the voters. The Senate is a smaller body, elected 
for longer terms from the various "departments" by colleges 
of electors, themselves chosen directly by the people. 1 The 
President of the Republic, a dignitary who, it has been flip- 
pantly said, "neither reigns nor rules," is chosen for seven 
years by the two chambers together. 

The constitutional laws went into effect in 1875, and the 
next year occurred the first elections to the Chamber of Depu- 
ties. Though there were no real parties or party organiza- 
tions, as in an American election, those who favored the con- 
tinuance of the republic made every effort to defeat the mon- 
archists and to have republicans elected in their places. They 
were inspired to do this by fear lest the monarchists overthrow 
the republic. The National Assembly in 1873 had elected a 
monarchist. Marshal MacMahon, to be president of the repub- 
lic, and had confirmed his authority for seven years from that 
date. It was well known that some of that party, seeing that 
a monarchy was not immediately possible, hoped that in the 
course of the "Septennate" under MacMahon an opportunity 
would come to destroy the republic and to reestablish the 
throne in France. The republicans intended to be prepared 
for all eventualities, and fortunately succeeded in capturing a 
large majority of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The 
Senate, however, was monarchist in complexion, and it was 
suspected that the disgruntled monarchist party would not 
stop short of violence to regain control of the government. 

Here were materials prepared for an explosion, and it was 
not long in coming. The clerical party had been conducting 
for several years a propaganda which was endangering the 

iAt first many of the senators were named for life. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 123 

peace of the republic. It wished to see France embark on a 
policy of hostility to Italy, desiring to see the temporal power 
of the pope restored; in effect, it preached war on Italy. It 
was hostile to Germany, also. The liberal ministry, urged on 
by Gambetta and the Chamber of Deputies, accepted a resolu- 
tion denouncing the clericals for their dangerous agitation. 
The ministry continued to have the full confidence of the 
Chamber, but MacMahon, incensed at its yielding and himself 
egged on by the clericals and monarchists, dismissed the min- 
istry as no longer having his confidence. This was, of course, 
entirely contrary to the parliamentary principle that a min- 
istry is entitled to remain in office as long as it has the con- 
fidence of parliament. MacMahon quickly found it impossible 
to get a new ministry which could work in harmony with the 
Chamber of Deputies, and thereupon, with the consent of the 
Senate, he dissolved the Chamber and provided for new elec- 
tions. 

The campaign which followed (1877) was an extremely 
heated one. The republicans felt that the republic itself was 
at stake. Opposed to them was the full strength of both 
clerical and monarchist parties. "Clericalism, that is the 
enemy!" said Gambetta, and that became the issue of the 
election. He even went so far as to say that when the de- 
cision had been rendered at the polls, MacMahon must either 
submit to it or resign. Despite governmental influence at the 
polls, the republicans won again. They were jubilant, for to 
them it seemed that the republic had been saved. MacMahon 
wisely submitted to the decision, and as his position became 
increasingly uncomfortable, he resigned before the end of 
his term, in 1879. 

The new regime had thus weathered its first great storm. 
The Septennate had passed without the monarchists having 
been able to destroy the republic. Nevertheless, the danger 
was by no means over. Frenchmen, and it seems especially 
true in politics, cling tenaciously to their ideas. Contrary 
majorities are no argument to them. The monarchists, being 
Frenchmen, continued to be monarchists and Frenchmen, even 
under the republic. Time and again in French history after 



124 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

1877, there appeared this same sinister coalition of monar- 
chists and clericalists, threatening the very existence of the re- 
public. Once, in the Boulanger incident, they had with them 
much of the army, the greatest single organization in France, 
and also the chauvinists. At a somewhat later day they mus- 
tered to their cause a still larger part of the army, as well as 
all the anti-Semites; this was during the Dreyfus incident. 
In both cases the republic rocked and trembled, but it with- 
stood the storm. 

It is a curious but significant commentary on the Third- 
French Republic that most of the histories of it devote a con- 
siderable portion of their pages to a series of apparently dis- 
connected, meaningless, and unprofitable "incidents." The 
sixteenth of May, 1877, — for to Frenchmen a mere date is 
often the full, sufficient, and sometimes the only name they 
have for an event, great or small — the "Wilson scandal and 
the Boulanger affair in the 'eighties, the Panama scandal and 
the Dreyfus incident in the 'nineties, and to many the Caillaux 
incident of the new century — all receive much attention. The 
number of these per decade seems, happily, to be growing 
smaller, but on the other hand it is a mistake to consider them 
meaningless. Men who did not know Dreyfus, who would 
perhaps have been repulsed rather than attracted by him, and 
who had not the slightest interest in him personally, fought 
as stoutly upon his side as his personal friends and his rela- 
tives. In each of the more important of these incidents, — 
the sixteenth of May, Boulangism, and the Dreyfus case, — 
the struggle soon became one for an ideal, and the alinement of 
parties in all three was almost identical. Each became a strug- 
gle of the anti-clerical, anti-militaristic republicans against 
the reactionary and disruptive forces within the republic — 
the monarchists, the clericals, and the military party. That 
in each of these cases the struggle took on this character is 
just as much the fault of the republicans as it is that of their 
opponents, Each party hates just as bitterly and forgives as 
reluctantly as the other. Neither seems ever to forget. Inci- 
dents which in England or America would be settled in an 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 125 

orderly way in six months and forgotten in a year become in 
France the v occasion of the most violent strife and scurrilous 
attack. Incidents are idealized, if we may so use the word. 
To republicans, the Dreyfus conviction did not mean the 
chance miscarriage of justice in the case of an otherwise in- 
significant young Jewish army officer. It meant that a coali- 
tion of reactionaries and clericals, always the enemies of the 
republic and now strong in the army, with the anti-Semites, 
were trying to ride roughshod over the rights of the people, 
and therefore over the republic itself. That thought girded 
them to endure continuous strife and sacrifice, until the wrong 
had been righted and "the principle of the thing" established, 
as we say. Let any American compare this attitude with our 
own easy consciences during the notorious Frank case of a 
few years ago, and he will see wherein the difference consists. 
In politics and government the sixteenth of May incident 
had other important results. The right of the government 
to dissolve parliament whenever it clearly no longer repre- 
sents the people or when there is grave doubt as to the people's 
wishes is essential to the proper working of every parlia- 
mentary system. If it is not used, then every parliament is, 
upon election, definitely assured of its four- or five-year term, 
and during that period it is absolutely irresponsible and all 
powerful. If, on the other hand, the government can hold 
the threat of an appeal to the people over the head of parlia- 
ment as a club, responsibility can be enforced. Members 
think twice before risking the expense and fatigue and uncer- 
tainty of a new election. But because it was a monarchist 
president, MacMahon, who first used the right of dissolution in 
France, and because his act was considered an attempt to over- 
throw the republic in favor of a monarchy, no president since 
his day has used the power to dissolve parliament, for fear 
that his act would be similarly interpreted. This is not the 
only reason, indeed, but the fact is that there has been no dis- 
solution of a parliament in France since 1877. The result of 
this, and of a pernicious committee system recently slightly 
reformed, and of the inexplicable suspicion which French 



126 THE KOOTS OF THE WAR 

parliaments evince toward their leaders in the cabinet, is that 
parliament has all the power and no responsibility, while the 
cabinet has all the responsibility, but almost no power. 

Another factor, too, should be mentioned here. France has 
no parties in the American or English sense, but only many 
small factions. Republicanism is the only enduring issue in 
France, and almost the entire parliamentary membership is 
republican. For that reason factions differ little from each 
other ; they are to a considerable extent based on personal lead- 
ership. But no cabinet can take office until it has combined 
enough of these factions to make up a majority in parliament. 
Now the approved way to combine factions is to give cabinet 
places to those who lead the factions, and thus every cabinet 
contains the leaders of at least three or four of these small 
groups. The result can be nothing but quick disintegration, 
and that, indeed, is what happens. In the forty years from 
1875 to 1915, France had fifty cabinets, or about one every 
ten months. Although some served as much as two years or 
more, some lasted only a few weeks or months. Cabinets flit 
by like straws in the breeze, and often with no more effect. 
But of course the members are not entirely changed from one 
cabinet to the next. Some of the same names often appear 
in one cabinet after another, and then reappear again after a 
lapse of time. Moreover, the mere fact that the cabinet has 
changed does not stop important legislation; that is mainly 
controlled by the Chambers themselves and by their com- 
mittees, and it goes on in happy ignorance of shiftings in the 
ministry. 

Because of this constant procession of weak and short-lived 
ministries ; because, through constant changes, their character 
remains always the same ; because of the corruption and in- 
efficiency which seem to be ineradicable from French politics ; 
because of the personal vituperation, the unbridled scurrility 
which attends all elections ; and because of other contributing 
factors, politics in France has fallen into the control of a 
class of men who are far from being the best that the ' l Grand 
Nation" can show. The same may be true in other countries, 
but it is strikingly the case in France. The industrious, tern- 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 127 

perate, thrifty, and often pious man of toil or small business is 
unrepresented in parliament. The leaders in business, in art, 
in letters, are also strangers within its walls. The former 
class, very large, displays nothing but an imperturbable in- 
difference to politics. The latter classes, small but able, 
though without power in the field of politics, assume the pes- 
simistic attitude toward the republic which has become typical 
of them. 

Does all this mean that France is incapable of self-govern- 
ment? Far from it; but it certainly does mean that parlia- 
mentary institutions are not adapted to the political condi- 
tions existing in France. The parliamentary system grew 
up in England, and its growth was the result of conditions 
there existing. These conditions are apparently the sine qua 
non of a parliamentary system : a two party system, a trusted 
titular head of the government who can act as umpire between 
the parties, and absolute confidence on all sides that both par- 
ties and the king himself are completely loyal to the consti- 
tution. France has none of these conditions, and for that 
reason the parliamentary system has not worked well. France 
may sooner or later have to change the form of her govern- 
ment, but the basic principles — republicanism or popular 
sovereignty, and manhood or universal suffrage — must remain, 
for the French will continue to be a democratic, self-governing 
people. 

The rise and fall of ministries in England and the quad- 
rennial election of presidents in the United States form con- 
venient and often important landmarks in the histories of 
these respective countries. Since the resignation of MacMa- 
hon in 1879, every president of France has been a republican 
and a moderate, but though a man were a leader when he 
became president, upon his elevation to that post he ceases to 
have any tangible influence on affairs. For that reason. the 
presidential term in France, though of convenient length, is 
a wholly impertinent division of historical time v On the 
other hand, the duration of a ministry is too uncertain and, 
as a rule, too ephemeral to make it of real importance' in? an 



128 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

all-too-brief survey of the history of the republic. Indeed, 
the history of the republic is itself so short that its further 
subdivision into periods of time is not very useful. The 
best method of attack is to take up the leading great "inci- 
dents" already mentioned and the great problems which have 
continued throughout the history of the republic. And in a 
history like this, which attempts to trace the origins of the 
Great War back to about 1870, the great problems of Alsace- 
Lorraine and Revanche, and military competition with Ger- 
many, deserve special treatment. The more exclusively dip- 
lomatic problems are dealt with in separate chapters, while 
domestic scandal must be ignored. 

Both Alsace and Lorraine lie on the west bank of the Rhine. 
They constitute a part of that neutral language zone stretch- 
ing from Belgium south and east through Luxemburg, along 
the upper Rhine valley, through Switzerland, and thence along 
the Italian "Irredenta," a zone where the Germanic languages 
and those of Latin origin are spoken in about equal degree. 
To the east of this nameless zone lie the German-speaking 
Hollanders, Germans, and Austrians; to the west the Ro- 
mance-speaking Belgians, French, and Italians. Through 
centuries the zone has hardly changed, but the government of 
the territory involved has been one of the most bitterly con- 
tested issues in European history. 

Alsace and Lorraine were, undoubtedly, during the middle 
and early modern ages part of the so-called "Holy Roman 
Empire," that vast fiction which pretended to be the suc- 
cessor of the real Roman Empire, and which was "neither 
holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." It claimed dominion over 
most of the German peoples of the Middle Ages, but did not 
really govern them. At the beginning of the modern age, 
while France was the greatest power on the continent, Ger- 
man national feeling was so weak that the "Holy Roman 
Empire" rapidly fell to pieces. Then it was that France 
extended her control over Lorraine and Alsace, acquiring the 
former in the sixteenth and the latter in the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Throughout the eighteenth century and the years of the 
Revolution and the Napoleonic era, they remained French, 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 129 

and in 1815 they^were confirmed to France by the Congress 
of Vienna, in which Austria and Prussia took leading parts. 
During these years, and also after 1815, the people in both 
districts shared equally with all other parts of France in 
governmental affairs, in the Revolution, and in the Napoleonic 
wars. That there was among them any material dissatisfac- 
tion with their government or their French allegiance has not 
been proved. During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies the French language and French culture spread rap- 
idly among them, but so did it throughout Germany proper 
in the days when even a Prussian king (Frederick the Great,) 
preferred the French language to his own. 

But the nineteenth century beheld a most remarkable out- 
burst of German national feeling, an effervescence which re- 
sulted presently in the creation of a new German Empire, 
based upon the principle of nationality. Before the empire 
was created, however, Prussia had first torn away territory 
from Denmark and then ousted Austria from German leader- 
ship by a short, sharp conflict in 1866. Even yet the work 
could not be completed. The new confederation, headed by 
Prussia, had first to humble France, the greatest single power 
on the Continent, before the southern German states could 
be induced to enter the federation. This was the work of the 
war of 1870. Upon the solid basis of military power, as 
proved by the defeat of France, was to be founded the new 
national empire under Prussian hegemony. The war was 
fought, and with a success which must have surprised even 
the Prussians, So great, indeed, was the victory, that Ger- 
many could have asked almost any terms from the victim, 
France. 

In 1866 Prussia had been lenient with Austria. What 
would her terms to France be? That the rulers of Prussia 
had already outlined the main points on which they would 
insist in case of overwhelming victory, we cannot doubt. But 
that even well-informed Germans outside government circles 
did not know what the terms would be, and had not spe- 
cifically formulated any demand for annexation of territory, 
is indubitable. While the war was still going on, Heinrich 



130 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

von Treitschke, an influential historian, published on the spur 
of the moment a pointed and bombastic article entitled, 
"What We Demand from France." 1 Germany was already 
sure of victory, and King William had promised the people 
"that the peace shall be worthy of our sacrifices." Much 
was still dark as to conditions in France, the writer confessed. 
"But one task remains for our press — to bring out the un- 
uttered and half-formed hopes which move in every breast 
into clear consciousness, so that, on the conclusion of peace., 
a firm and intelligent national pride may rise in enthusiasm 
behind our statesmen. . . . The thought, however, which, after 
first knocking timidly at our doors as a shamefaced wish, has, 
in four swift weeks, grown to be the mighty war-cry of the 
nation, is no other than this: 'Restore what you stole from 
us long ago; give back Alsace and Lorraine.' ' 

Thus, among the first fruits of German nationalism was a 
sort of "irredentist" doctrine, distinguishable in almost no 
particular from the Italian desire to "recover" the Trentino 
and Trieste and the present French desire to recover Alsace 
and Lorraine. But it seems to make a difference whose ox is 
gored! "During the last two centuries, from the earliest 
beginnings of the Prussian state," continues Treitschke, "we 
have been struggling to liberate the lost German lands from 
foreign domination." Having said that, he threw out this 
somewhat unflattering remark concerning the people in the 
lost German lands concerned: "We cannot permit a Ger- 
man people, thoroughly degraded and debased, to serve against 
Germany, before our eyes, as the vassal of a foreign power." 
He offered other reasons, too, why Alsace and Lorraine should 
be annexed to Germany, among them principally the military 
argument. Germany needed to control these lands for her 
own defense. "The sense of justice to Germany demands 
the lessening of France." "Our military organization has 
no meaning without secure boundaries. ' ' And then, prophetic 
premise, but misguided conclusion, comes a typical bit of 

i Heinrich von Treitschke; "Germany, France, Russia, and Islam," 
translated into English, with a foreword by George Haven Putnam, 
1915, pp. 96-179. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 131 

German reasoning: "The distracted world already foresees 
a whole brood of wars springing out of the bloody seed of 
this. We owe it some guarantee of permanent peace among 
the nations, and we shall only give it, so far as human strength 
can, when German guns frown from the fortified passes of 
the Yosges on the territories of the Gaulish race, when our 
armies can sweep into the plains of Champagne in a few days' 
march, when the teeth of the wild beast are broken, and weak- 
ened France can no longer venture to attack us. ' ' 

The mere fact that Alsatians and Lorrainers of 1871 did not 
want to be annexed to Germany bore no meaning to this 
writer. Upon the declaration of war an "anxious cry rang 
through Alsace and Lorraine, 'The dice are to be thrown to 
settle the destiny of our provinces!' " But "in view of our 
obligation to secure the peace of the world, who will venture 
to object that the people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want 
to belong to us ? The doctrine of the right of all the branches 
of the German race to decide on their own destinies, the 
plausible solution of demagogues without a fatherland, shiver 
to pieces in the presence of the sacred necessity of these great 
days. These territories are ours by the right of the sword, 
and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher right — the 
right of the German nation which will not permit its lost 
children to remain strangers to the German Empire. We 
Germans, who know Germany and France, know better than 
these unfortunates themselves what is good for the people of 
Alsace, who have remained under the misleading influence of 
their French connection outside the sympathies of new Ger- 
many. Against their will we shall restore them to their true 
selves. ' ' 

But quotations from Treitschke can easily be overdone, and 
they probably do not represent the thoughts of the entire 
people. What did the French think when they had to give 
up the whole of Alsace and a large part of Lorraine to the con- 
queror still encamped upon their own soil? The members 
from the severed districts themselves presented to the Na- 
tional Assembly on February 16, 1871, a declaration against 



132 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the dismemberment so burning in its terms that it seres itself 
into the heart even now, almost fifty years later. They denied 
that France, or even Europe itself, could ratify the act of the 
aggressor in tearing them from France in such a way as to 
make the deed binding on them. 1 But if France could not 
sanction the treaty in such a way as to bind the victims, it 
had to endure the blow. De facto, the cession was made. 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries France had 
been "the mistress of Europe." Her culture, her literature, 
her language, had swept almost everything before them. The 
Revolution had not materially dimmed her luster, nor had 
the defeat inflicted upon Napoleon by the great European 
coalition really deprived her of her proud position as the 
strongest single power in Europe. Despite frequent changes 
in her government during the early nineteenth century, the 
fiction of her leadership still remained. Frenchmen were not 
only reverently and righteously proud of their history, but 
they also loved their land as did few other peoples in the 
world. These are some of the reasons why the forced cession 
of Alsace and Lorraine was so bitter, so unforgivable and un- 
forgetable a blow. 

Despite the "decline of idealism" in France already men- 
tioned, the French are neither hedonists nor realists. They 
continue to this day to idealize things and events. The idea 
which has become associated in their minds with the wresting 
from them of these beautiful portions of their land, is that it 
proves their national decadence and impotence. It is a blot 
on the scutcheon, or, as it were, a symbol of their decline. 
Until the blot is wiped out, France continues to be a second- 
rate power, or less. 

There have been many explanations of the deadening pes- 
simism which fell upon the more well-to-do and educated 
classes in France after the Franco-Prussian War, spreading 
even into other strata of society. Among the causes which 
contributed to that feeling, none was more potent than this 
idealization of the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Of the meta- 

i "Declaration of Bordeaux," 1871. It will be found reprinted in the 
"New York Times Current History," August, 1917, pp. 264-65. 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 133 

phors which the French used to describe their loss, that which 
styled it "an op>en sore in the side of France " was most ex- 
pressive and most strangely true. It was not that France 
was literally bleeding to death through this wound. France 
lives not so much by the blood in her veins, as by the thoughts, 
emotions, and ideals centering about her glorious national 
history. It was these which trickled from her through the 
gaping hole in the northeast, and in their place grew up a 
soul-stifling pessimism. 

Nevertheless, her material recovery from the great defeat 
was quick, — astoundingly so. The debt was paid back with 
a celerity which opened the eyes of Germany. The nation 
which was to have been "lessened" for many decades be- 
came prosperous again in less than one. As early as 1875 
Germany showed fear that, instead of insuring peace for 
herself, she had indeed sowed the seeds of another war. From 
that day down to 1914 every outburst in France of popular 
feeling against Germany, every change in the military prepa- 
ration of that country, has caused the German rulers not only 
annoyance, but downright apprehension. War scares have 
come again and again. Bismarck, desiring no colonies for 
Germany, tried to divert French attention and energies away 
from "revenge" for Alsace-Lorraine to distant colonial en- 
terprises. This policy he varied at times by attempts to 
embroil France with her neighbors, especially Italy. 1 These 
expedients failed in every way. France had energy enough 
to carry out large colonization projects and at the same time 
to prepare against the day of another Franco-German war. 
It was impossible to keep France and Italy constantly at 
loggerheads. Later on Germany herself desired colonies, and 
then especially was revealed Bismarck's short-sightedness in 
encouraging French colonial schemes. 

Hatred of Germany, the desire for revanche, burned on 
unquenched in France. Gambetta, who had organized defense 
against the Prussians in the south during 1871 and who signed 
the Bordeaux Declaration, was to most Germans the personifi- 

1 In 1878 he urged both governments at the same time to seize Tunis. 
For the Tunisian affair and its results, see pp. 316-18, 



134 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

cation of the revanche idea. When he died on the last day 
of 1882, Germany heaved a sigh of relief. As a matter of 
fact, however, Gambetta had generally suppressed his desire 
to preach revenge, by which the French mean the retaking 
of Alsace and Lorraine. It was his most bitter opponents, 
the monarchists and clericalists, who caused the war scare 
of 1875, and during the next two years he led in the attempt 
to curb these elements. To him, clericalism was always the 
enemy. After his death the revenge idea was aroused again 
by Boulanger, with a resultant war scare in 1887. But the 
propaganda cannot be connected with the names of any per- 
sons or any party. It was all-pervasive, until the various 
socialist groups and parties appeared in the field. They have 
generally discouraged it. 

The fuels to keep the fire burning have been supplied, how- 
ever, rather by Prussian misgovernment in Alsace-Lorraine, 
than by the French desire for revenge. Had Germany really 
been able to satisfy the Alsatians, especially, it is doubtful 
whether France would have clung so tenaciously to the idea 
of retaking that which was stolen from her. This is a side of 
the question which is handled elsewhere. The Alsatians and 
Lorrainers have desired real self-government and have clam- 
ored for it year in and year out. Always they have been 
met with rebuffs. Despairing, especially since 1910, of get- 
ting reform from Germany, they have kept alive the hope of 
restoration to France, a hope that since 1914 many have 
thought possible of realization. German authors and Ger- 
man newspapers, too, have continued to fan the flames, taunt- 
ing the French constantly with a desire for revenge, a chal- 
lenge which French newspapers have not been slow to accept. 

So far it has seemed impossible for French and German 
minds really to meet on the question. Germany says that the 
settlement of 1870 was final, and that France should have 
accepted it as such. The French retort that the settlement 
of 1681, which gave the provinces to France, was reopened 
by the Prussian War nearly two centuries later. Germany 
alleges that the lands are typically and historically German. 
France replies that the people of both provinces were happy 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 135 

when a part of France, that they resented the forced separa- 
tion, and that they have continued to desire reannexation to 
France. Germany alleges that she has a right to hold the 
provinces, because she has a right to protection against 
France. France justly rejoins that the danger of German 
attack on France is just as great as the danger of a French 
attack on Germany ; that a people of forty million is not very 
likely to attack unjustly one of seventy million; and that 
France has just as much right to protection against Germany 
as Germany has against France. So the debate runs, with 
many more arguments. The usual German apologist, unable 
to think back to the days before 1870, when the situation was 
nearly reversed, condemns France without measure for re- 
fusing to accept the Treaty of Frankfort, 1871, as a final 
settlement. The ordinary American finds it difficult not to 
accept the French view, and all he needs to confirm him in 
this view, ordinarily, is to read some German argument to 
the contrary. "What however was to be the final solution was 
placed "in the lap of the gods," when the Great War broke 
out in 1914. 

Did the French desire to retake Alsace and Lorraine bring 
on the present war? The charge was commonly made by 
German writers and statesmen at the beginning of the conflict. 
Suffice it to say, however, that other parts of this book will 
show that the causes of the war lay elsewhere. But, cer- 
tainly, the constant French apprehension of a new war with 
Germany forced her into an unnatural alliance with the Rus- 
sian autocracy, an alliance which, having once been com- 
pleted, kept alive French hopes of a successful war some day 
against Germany. 

The history of France as a military power begins far back 
in almost forgotten centuries, but never before in time of 
peace did her armies represent so large a proportion of her 
population as in the years before the Great War. It is a 
common assertion in Germany that the French armies during 
this time were being organized for aggression upon the empire 
of Bismarck. Competent and impartial observers, while as- 



136 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

founded at the spectacle of a democracy yielding up all her 
sons for military training, have scouted this idea. It was 
not an aggressive, war-loving spirit which was dominating 
France. It was dread, simply common dread. The Franco- 
Prussian War taught France her great lesson. The fear of 
another Teutonic invasion, with the white and black flags of 
Prussia being carried once more in triumph through the 
streets of Paris, steeled even the hearts of the French repub- 
licans to prepare against this day of disaster. To this end 
no sacrifice seemed too great, no burden too heavy. 

France had had tastes of universal compulsory service be- 
fore, but the policy became fixed in 1872. At first the laws 
were loose, many exemptions being allowed and service being 
nominally for three years. Then, in 1905, while the term 
of service was cut to two years, all exemptions, save for 
physical disability, were abolished. For a time this sufficed. 
But always the attempt had been to keep up with Germany, — 
a thing which was becoming rapidly impossible. France's 
population was nearly stationary, while Germany advanced 
with giant strides. France had long been compelled to train 
all her young men, while Germany was annually able to 
reject many. Even so, France was unable to maintain the 
pace. In 1910 Germany's effective forces were 620,000 men, 
while those of France were 552,000, of which some were 
Algerians and Tunisians stationed in Africa, plus a native 
colonial army of little training. Besides this discrepancy in 
land forces, France had for some years been inferior to Ger- 
many in naval power, and she was rapidly growing, in pro- 
portion to Germany, still weaker upon the seas. 

Beginning, perhaps, with Italy's war on Turkey in Tripoli 
in 1911, the tension in the European diplomatic situation grew 
greater daily. The agitation expressed itself in Germany 
during 1911, 1912, and 1913, in extraordinary increases in 
military expenditures and effective forces. The forts were 
strengthened especially along the French border in Alsace- 
Lorraine, and the garrisons there were increased. Secret mili- 
tary advices reached France, both in 1912 and 1913, indi- 
cating a pending early attack on France. The German officers 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 137 

responsible for the. proposed increases made, in their unofficial 
capacities, no secret of the purpose of the increases. French 
authorities were thrown into a flutter of anxiety. On the 
two-year service basis France had already reached the limit 
of her military strength. There was only one thing left to 
do — increase the period of service to three years, and thus have 
three classes always under arms. Acting under a power ap- 
parently given by the law of 1905, the minister of war ordered 
that the class of 1910 be held during 1913, making its third 
year of service. This action was later ratified by a substan- 
tial majority in parliament, despite a violent campaign con- 
ducted by socialists, syndicalists, and anarchists. LTp to this 
time France had been able to keep fairly close behind Ger- 
many in her preparations. The three-year law of 1913 seemed 
now to meet the new exigency, the recently elected president 
of the republic, M. Poincaire, himself speaking in high praise 
of the arrangements. From the summer of 1913 on, however, 
it became increasingly evident that the army was woefully un- 
prepared and poorly equipped. Investigation proved that 
the apparent increase of strength was a sheer delusion, due 
to mismanagement. The authorities proceeded at once to set 
their house in order, but the war in 1914 found them still in 
the midst of their preparations. 

Despite many distractions and a heavy military burden, 
France has, under the Third Republic, notably expanded her 
colonial dominions and improved the conditions of her peo- 
ple. 

In the seventeenth century the French monarchy was able 
to lay claim to territories in America, Africa, and Asia, 
but the wars of the eighteenth century up to 1763 left her 
deprived of most of her American domain. Not until the 
acquisition of a claim to Algeria in 1830 did her colonial 
activities permanently revive. Then for about thirty years 
France made extensive explorations in Asia, Africa, and 
Oceania, laying hands on some territories and establishing 
claims to others. America was, of course, closed to her after 
1823 by the Monroe Doctrine. 



138 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The next twenty years, though not a period of quiescence, 
brought no fruits into her lap. The most recent and most 
productive period of colonial acquisition was inaugurated in 
1881 by the declaration of a protectorate over Tunis. During 
the following fifteen years Tonking, Annam, and Laos in 
Asia, Congo, Upper Senegal and Niger, Dahomey, and Mauri- 
tania became French colonies in quick succession. In the 
same period France also made good certain ancient claims 
to a number of Oceanic Islands, Madagascar, and Senegal. 
Sahara and Morocco have since been brought definitely within 
her sphere. 

Thus, in the last thirty years France has tremendously in- 
creased her colonial holdings. The area of the African 
colonies alone exceeds that of the United States and Alaska, 
but it is unprofitable to compare Sahara sands with Alaskan 
ice-fields or fertile American plains. French colonies lie in 
every quarter of the globe, but are principally equatorial, and 
have a population, mainly African and Asiatic, in excess 
of forty millions. Unfortunately, Frenchmen are not good 
colonizers. They are attached by strong bonds to their native 
soil. Very few, indeed, leave their beloved villages for 
foreign lands, even for French colonies. It is deplorable, 
too, that the French colonial policy has been dictated mainly 
by a desire to promote the commercial interests of France. 
Nevertheless, French colonies are in the main well adminis- 
tered, while recent changes in policy, looking toward the self- 
administration of the colonies for the colonies, are extremely 
promising. 

Social progress in France is a fact not generally heralded 
from the housetops. Germany undoubtedly led and still leads 
France, as she leads England and the United States, in pro- 
vision for the amelioration of the condition of the poor. 
Whether or not the German system of social-welfare legislation 
was, as has been recently alleged, a sop to appease the Ger- 
man workman for his unfortunate political status, Germany 
should still be given full credit for working out the laws. 

In France the acts have been passed by the representatives 
of the sovereign people at the people's behest. These laws 



THE THIRD REPUBLIC, AND ITS TRIALS 13S 



include a workman's compensation act, in effect since 1898 
an old age and invalidity pension law, effective since 1907 
and an old age insurance law, which is partly compulsory, ii 
effect since 1910. Still more recent laws make special pro 
vision for women in factories and legalize allowances foi 
mothers. Eleven hours of labor per day, with a rest da^ 
on Sunday, has been made the legal limit for all workers 
A special department of labor, with a seat in the ministry 
has existed since 1906. These laws, it should be said, ar< 
mainly the result of the rapid advance to power of the variou: 
socialist and radical groups in parliament, to whom most o: 
the credit it due. As a result of the operation of the acts 
together with the slow increase of population, the remarkabh 
thrift of the people, and a host of other factors, the stat< 
of popular well-being in France compares favorably witl 
that of any country in the world. 

The "Grand Nation" of the eighteenth and earlier cen 
turies has in more modern times revealed undoubted faults 
She has to some extent resigned herself to a weakening pas 
sion for revenge, forgetting Bacon's saying that "in taking 
revenge, a man is but even with his enemy ; but in passing ovei 
it, he is superior." She has looked too much abroad for hei 
models, many of her own people coming to believe that merely 
because France could not keep up with Germany and Englanc 
in population figures and in the growth of industry, she there 
fore must be decadent. She has suffered from much bac 
government and public inefficiency. A small scandal-breedim 
class in Paris, largely foreign or under foreign influence, b^ 
gaining notoriety for itself, has served to soil the very name 
of France in the thought of a captious but uninformed world 
Much more could be written in this vein, but when all is said 
France stands in our minds to-day the France of Verdun 
Under the stress of events, even her government has beer 
materially improved, while all the quiet virtues of the people 
— their thrift, their orderliness, their sense of duty to France 
their heroism, yes, even their natural, deep piety, — have com* 
to the fore in the united effort of the nation to drive the arro 
gant invader from French soil. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 

NAPOLEON is generally credited with having kindled in 
the hearts of Italians the desire for national unity, and 
from his day to this the fires have never gone out. Having 
conquered the peninsula he gave it uniform laws, notably a 
civil code and a system of administration. He created in 
northern Italy a new Kingdom of Italy, of which in 1805 he 
took the crown. He made other disposition of the south. 
Thereby he destroyed, almost at a blow, many old boundaries 
and old institutions, and gave Italians to see that across the 
limits their neighbors were even as they were themselves. 

With the defeat and exile of Napoleon, Italy was in 1815 
divided once more according to the previous boundaries. 
Austrians were put on some thrones, restored Bourbons on 
others, while the pope retained his estates at the center. The 
Austrian influence was everywhere. Yet things were not as 
they had been. Italians had seen their unity, and now 
when the tyrants began to govern according to the methods 
of Machiavelli, but without the moderation he really advised, 
they found themselves opposed not by single communities, 
but by the rising surge of national feeling. Though cruelly 
suppressed, the outbreaks became numerous in the thirties 
and forties, and they assumed more and more the character 
of a national movement for liberation. National unity became 
to Italians not only a coveted end in itself, but also a means 
of liberating Italians, of redeeming Italy, from the oppression 
of the foreigner. The revolutionary spirit was abroad, and 
it soon took the form of a movement to make Italy one state, 
Italians one people, and to give them one government, and 
that their own. 

Fortunately there were leaders in Italy, clever, strong, 

140 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 141 

imaginative, daring, unselfish men who caught the vision of 
a great Italy rousing herself and rising to a high place among 
the nations, and who were not afraid to risk all in the struggle. 
The rulers of Piedmont, a noble and ancient house, soon put 
themselves in the van. King Charles Albert, and after him 
his son Victor Emmanuel II, led in the movement which was 
destined to change them from the almost absolute rulers 
of Piedmont to the constitutional monarchs of a united Italy. 
The desired end was a free and united nation. For this 
Mazzini agitated and conspired, Garibaldi fought, and Count 
Camillo Cavour negotiated and planned. The year 1848 saw 
Charles Albert grant to the Piedmontese a liberal constitution, 
and soon after saw him lead the half-organized Italian national 
forces against the Austrians. At first the Italians enjoyed a 
little success, but they were ill-united, and the White Coats 
were too strong. Terrible defeats followed at Custozza in 
1848 and at Novara in 1849. In the latter year Charles 
Albert resigned his throne rather than accept the oppressive 
terms of the Austrians. The national movement seemed 
crushed. The reaction under Austrian leadership was 
terrible. Gladstone visited Italy at this time, and described 
what he saw in Naples during the persecution of the liberals 
there by the king of the ' ' Two Sicilies " as ' ' an outrage upon 
religion, upon civilization, upon humanity, and upon de- 
cency," . . . "the negation of God erected into a system of 
government. ' ' 

But the leaders had not yet lost hope. Charles Albert 
was succeeded by his far more able son, Victor Emmanuel 
II, who remained loyal to the liberal constitution of 1848 de- 
spite strong and tempting inducements to overthrow it, inas- 
much as Austria feared the existence of a liberal govern- 
ment anywhere in Italy. Soon after, Cavour became head 
of the ministry of Piedmont, and Piedmont, alone in Italy, 
began immediately to enjoy constitutional liberty and pro- 
gressive liberal legislation. But always Cavour looked ahead, 
to the time when he could do for all Italy what he was then 
doing simply for Piedmont. Incidentally he prepared Pied- 
mont and its army for leadership in the coming struggle with 



142 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Austria. He seized every opportunity to raise Piedmont to 
a high place in international affairs, even taking what seemed 
a rash part in the Crimean War. He played upon Napoleon 
III, Emperor of France, winning him to the Italian cause as 
against Austria. He advertised to the world the tyrannies 
of the Austrians and inspired Italians to believe that Pied- 
mont would lead them to liberty. At last when the time 
was ripe, he goaded Austria on to the rashness of declaring 
war, and the die was cast. Napoleon III came to the aid of 
Piedmont. In 1859 Austria was defeated at Magenta and 
Solferino, but before the Austrian armies had been driven 
entirely out of Italy, Napoleon made a hasty peace with the 
enemy. There was nothing for Piedmont to do but accept 
the terms. Venetia, in the northeast, remained Austrian 
territory, but Lombardy was ceded by Austria to Napoleon 
and by him to Piedmont. At the same time the way was 
cleared for the union of the northern Italian states with 
Piedmont, while Garibaldi and "the thousand" brought the 
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, that is Sicily and southern Italy, 
also into line. Thus in the year 1860 Parma, Modena, Ro- 
magna, Tuscany, Umbria, the Marches, and the Kingdom of 
the Two Sicilies were able to accept the constitution of Pied- 
mont and Victor Emmanuel as their king. In 1861 there 
was convened at Turin the first Italian parliament. With the 
exceptions of the Trentino, Venetia, Trieste and Istria on 
the north and east, and Rome, where French troops main- 
tained the last vestige of the temporal power of the pope, 
Italy was now united under one government, and freed from 
the Austrian yoke. 

It is little wonder, therefore, that Italians like to think of 
the year 1861 — a year fateful to us because it nearly meant 
the end of our union — as the year of their national unification. 
In this year the whole of Italy territorially, save Rome and 
Venetia, had a national government, — one king and one con- 
stitution. These had, moreover, not been forced upon the 
people, but chosen by and from among themselves. We say 
nearly all of Italy and almost all the Italians were now under 
one government, but unfortunately we cannot say all. TherG 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 143 

were some Italian lands and some Italian people " unre- 
deemed" as yet, and the problem of bringing them also into 
the new kingdom has come back to plague Italy again and 
again, even to this present day. 

It was, perhaps, Italy's greatest mistake to think of 1861 
not as a year of beginnings, but as a day of the fulfilment 
of her desires — a sort of millennium. She believed herself 
unified, and to her that meant that she was now able and 
entitled to play a great role among the nations. But national 
unity is a thing of many parts and not to be attained in a 
day, as the United States has well learned. It requires that 
there shall be a common national government, that all the 
nation and the national territory shall be under this one gov- 
ernment, and no parts still under foreign control. It in- 
volves giving all classes within the nation more or less a part 
in the government and equal opportunity for sharing in the 
national heritage, for otherwise there will be internal divi- 
sions. It requires, finally, that the nation, the territory, the 
government, shall together constitute as a matter of fact a 
self -standing, independent unit, free from the control of any 
foreign power. If it becomes commercially, politically, or in 
any other way the mere appanage of another power, it 
is not itself a national unity, but merely part of a larger 
unit. 

Now, Italy in 1861 was not a national-state in several of 
these particulars, and was doomed in the following fifty years 
to go through new struggles for unity, and yet to find herself 
in 1911, her jubilee year, still forced to speak of an "unre- 
deemed" portion of her territory and her people, and to 
recognize that certain internal divisions and dissensions still 
existed. Four years later, in 1915, she awoke to find that 
even while she had been struggling for internal unity, an 
arrogant foreign power had so spread its influence in the 
land that the foreigner looked upon Italy almost as a mere 
dependency. The history of Italy since 1861 is not, there- 
fore, a history of a truly ' ' united ' ' Italy, as some would have 
it, but a history of the sometimes enlightened, though often 
blind, striving after the substance of independence and unity. 



144 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Of all the great national states formed during the 18th 
and l ( Jth centuries, none has had more difficult problems to 
solve than has Italy. Among these problems, however, there 
has not been that of establishing a liberal constitutional 
regime. 

The Stat at o, which is to-day the constitution of united Italy, 
was drawn up in 1848 for Piedmont alone. It made no pro- 
vision for future amendments and in fact the text of the in- 
strument has not been formally changed in any particular to 
this day. Nevertheless the principle has slowly developed 
that all necessary adaptations of the constitution and laws 
to the needs of the country and the people can be made by 
the king and parliament, and in this way several minor fea- 
tures of the constitution have really been overruled. Whether 
or not the monarchical principle, or the parliamentary system 
of government, could be changed by ordinary act is a question 
which has not arisen in any practical way and is at present 
unlikely to arise. For this there are several reasons. 

In the first place, the kings from Charles Albert down to 
the present monarch, Victor Emmanuel III, have been loyal 
to the constitutional principle. They have not at any time 
tried to force their ideas upon an unwilling parliament, but 
have always governed in strict accord with the constitution. 
It is true that when one ministry has lost its control of 
parliament, the king has a fairly wide range of choice in 
selecting another, for Italy does not have two leading parties 
which alternate in control of the government. But in the 
exercise of this choice the king has not been arbitrary. Thus 
the ruling house of Italy has endeared itself to most of the 
people, and in spite of a long continued agitation by certain 
groups of radicals for the adoption of a republican form of 
government, Italy continues a limited monarchy. It re- 
quired only the assassination of King Humbert in 1900 by 
an ignorant nihilist to unite the whole nation against the 
republicans. The present monarch leans so far toward 
democracy that he has declared it his "intention to govern 
with the people for the people." To this principle he adheres. 
Instead of using every effort to suppress the socialists, as 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 145 

was done by Emperor William II of Germany up to the 
present war, he has introduced socialists into his cabinets. 
He is, indeed, living up to Crispi's ideal, when he said "The 
King is only the head of the nation, the Prince chosen by 
the people; with us there is no sovereign but the nation." x 

On the other hand, the people have been so long accus- 
tomed to parliamentary forms, and the elections to parliament 
have been put in recent years upon so broad a popular basis, 
that this feature also of the constitution is free from the 
danger of hasty change. 

The continued stability of the form of government, coupled 
with its real ease of amendment, has been no small factor in 
furthering the unification of Italy. The stability of institu- 
tions is especially tried in years of great shifts in party con- 
trol, when the losing party is inclined to believe that the 
incoming government is subversive of the constitution. In 
France the great shift in the control of the government from 
the conservative, monarchical parties to the republicans in 
1876 caused dangerous disturbances and nearly resulted 
shortly thereafter in a coup d'etat. Not so in Italy, where 
the great transfer of power from the conservative "right" 
to the liberal and radical "left" occurred in the same year 
without a hitch. 

The "left" which came into power can hardly be called a 
party. Indeed, the "right" had so completely lost in the 
elections that it had almost disappeared, while the "left" 
had such a tremendous majority as to be embarrassed by its 
own strength. It quickly broke up into groups, each fol- 
lowing its personal leader and all being equally without 
definite political principles. Under such circumstances there 
is only one way of getting a majority, and that is by forming 
coalitions of several groups. Such coalitions, being never 
based upon principle, but rather upon some unsavory bar- 
gain among the personal leaders of the units concerned, 
tend to be unstable. Thus it has come to pass that since 1876 
cabinets have come and gone in Italy with almost as great 
frequency as in France. Out of this constant shifting among 

i F. M. Underwood, "United Italy," 1912, pp. 225-226. 



146 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the groups there has been developed a new type of parlia- 
mentary leader, one who knows and cares little about the 
needs of the country and the elements of statesmanship ; but 
who is especially skilled in the strategy of combining groups 
into a majority bloc. Leaders like Giolitti have brought this 
art to its highest perfection, contriving to keep themselves in 
office year after year despite cabinet changes, and using the 
power thus gained to control elections, by fair means or foul, 
to return a majority favorable to the government. 

Under this malign political system, the government of 
Italy presents to the outsider all the evil aspects of the French. 
Indeed, the picture is even darker for Italy than for France. 
There is open and known corruption at elections, with not 
a little rioting and bloodshed. 1 Italians themselves profess 
to see a steady improvement in the conduct of elections, and 
that the politicians do not entirely control the people was 
proved by certain events in 1915. In fact, it must be said 
that as in France, so in Italy, the virtues of the people far 
surpass those of their politicians and government. At home 
the Italian is normally hard-working, frugal, honest, and 
hospitable, and he who judges the Italian people by their' 
parliamentary institutions does them a gross injustice. 

It should also be remembered, that while politics and gov- 
ernment under the "left" are odiously bad, the general trend 
of legislation since 1876 has been in the direction of democracy 
and the further unification of the people. When the "left" 
took office the suffrage was limited to literate persons who paid 
a fairly high direct tax, and to tradesmen and manufacturers 
who owned property of a certain value. Under this law only 
about two and one-half per cent, of the people could vote. 
By a law of 1882 passed by the "left" the number of voters 
was almost tripled, and in 1912-13 a complete new suffrage 
law extended the right to vote to a larger proportion of the 

i There seem also to have been municipal scandals of a type all too 
familiar to Americans. A few years ago Naples was favored with a 
municipal house-cleaning during which there were exposed more vari- 
eties of corruption than Tammany Hall could have boasted in its 
palmiest days. 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 147 

people than is the case in many American states. By this 
act the vote was given to all literate male Italians over 
twenty-one, to all illiterate males over thirty, and to all who 
have served in the army or navy, even though not twenty- 
one years old. The change has more than doubled the elec- 
torate, which now becomes considerably over twenty per cent, 
of the population. By these successive steps, dangerous 
though they be, one section of the people after another has 
been brought into closer touch with the government, and 
serious groups for disaffection have been removed. 1 

The unification of 1861 was merely political and was not 
complete even in that sphere. Socially and economically, 
Italy was not then, nor has it yet become, completely one 
nation. This fact is the more surprising when we recall that 
Italy is a small country, in area no larger than the state of 
Nevada. Considerable parts of this small area are moun- 
tainous and scarcely habitable, while the inhabited portions 
are separated from each other by very formidable mountain 
barriers and present great differences in arability and climate. 
Since the fall of the Roman Empire these various parts have 
had dissimilar histories which are still evidenced in differences 
in dialect, architecture, and mode of life. Thus in the long, 
narrow "peninsula of peninsulas," which stretches full 700 
miles from Aosta in the northwest to the Straits of Messina, 
are to be found social and economic diversities as great as 
any existing in the United States, and perhaps greater, while 
those which do exist are the results of centuries of localized 
development. 

Broadly speaking, there is a "north" and a "south" in 
Italy, and the questions which this fact raises bristle with 
difficulties. Besides speaking a slightly different dialect, the 
north is more prosperous, more generally literate, more 
highly developed commercially and industrially than the 
south. Its upper classes are more individualistic than those 
in the south, its working classes more intelligent and more 

1 Cf. Amos S. Hershey, "The Recent Italian Elections," in "The Ameri- 
can Political Science Review," February, 1914, VIII, 50-56. 



148 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

open to the appeals of the Socialist party. Its schools are 
better, its people more law- abiding, its politics cleaner. 

The south, on the other hand, is oppressed by poverty and 
illiteracy. These evils, it is to be understood, exist through- 
out Italy, but are most virulent in the south. Workmen who 
received as little as twelve cents a day were not unknown in 
southern Italy just before the Great War began, while women 
worked for less. The diet of the poor is almost exclusively 
vegetarian and often of the coarsest. Once born in poverty, 
they are kept there by ignorance and illiteracy. To be sure 
before the war thousands went annually to the United States, 
and from that haven they sent each year millions of dollars, 
thus doubly relieving the pressure at home; yet even this 
did not suffice. The communes, mainly rural and agricultural 
in the south, were unable to maintain schools; while the 
state had little money to give. Thus illiteracy still stood, in 
1911, at 69 per cent, of the entire population over six years 
old in Calabria, whereas in Piedmont the illiterates were only 
11 per cent, of the people. 

Another evil, too, has long oppressed the south. Through 
centuries of cruel and tyrannical government, the people of 
Naples and Sicily especially had learned to distrust all gov- 
ernment. To them government had come to mean not order 
but violence, not justice but oppression. In the course of time, 
and it seems especially under the hated Austrian, they had 
taken the law into their own hands much after the fashion 
of certain mountain communities in our own South. It was 
not mob rule and lynch law, which results from sudden out- 
bursts of popular passion. It was instead the orderly organi 
zation of secret societies, Mafia and Camorra, whose decisions 
were absolute law to their members, superseding not only 
the laws of the state but even those of common morality. 
These societies defied the authorities of the state, dealing out 
rewards to friends and punishments to enemies which did not 
stop short of the most cruel death penalty — a wild and rough 
sort of justice, but very effective. 

This problem of north and south has not by any means 
been solved. There are explanations enough, some of which 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 149 

are worth repeating. In the first place the debt incurred in 
the wars of liberation and in creating a united Italy was 
extremely onerous to a poverty-stricken country. For many 
years in succession there were deficits, and never a surplus 
which could be used to promote education, to improve agricul- 
ture, or to ameliorate social conditions. Then, with the 
growth in prosperity, Italy must needs create a large army 
and navy, and later on dabble in doubtful colonial exploits, 
which always seemed to be considered before all other things, 
while the taking over of the railways added large amounts 
of necessary annual expense. Certain people in the north 
lay the whole blame on the south for not suppressing crime, 
supporting schools, and improving the condition of the poor. 
To this the south retorts that it had a later start and smaller 
resources than the north, while its problem was far graver, and 
it adds that the north is itself partly to blame, for while 
it has controlled the national government almost continuously 
since 1861 it has done almost nothing to help the south to 
solve its difficulties. 

The problem is indeed a thorny one, and the explanations 
merely serve to show that it is very real. As long as there is 
a "north" and a "south" in Italy, the Italians are not really 
a united nation. Unfortunately, too, the trend is not all 
toward unity, for there are those who talk of home rule for 
Sicily, to which a few non-thinking people in the north retort 
that it would be good riddance. 

If the people are divided between north and south, they 
are everywhere sundered on the great question of church and 
state. Even the present war finds this problem pressing and 
unsolved. 

Briefly stated, the recent history of the controversy be- 
tween the papacy and "united Italy" is this. The unification 
of 1859-61 deprived the church of all its "temporal estates" 
except Rome and its immediate surroundings. Before that 
time the pope had ruled a number of contiguous territories 
extending northeastward across the peninsula. The revolts 
of 1848 and 1849, and those of ten years later, were in part 



150 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

directed against the pope, and the last ones succeeded. The 
revolted church estates in north central Italy became, in I860, 
part of the new kingdom of united Italy, but Pope Pius IX did 
not cease to protest at having been thus robbed of his domin- 
ions. His expostulations were all in vain. The best he could 
do, and that with the aid of French bayonets, was to main- 
tain his power in Rome itself. 

In the following ten years the radical "left" in the newly 
created Italian parliament clamored oft and loudly for im- 
mediate and drastic action to oust the pope from Rome also. 
There was every reason to believe that an attack by Italy on 
Rome at this time would have meanl war with France. For 
this reason the more conservative "right" which was still in 
power, held back and waited a better day. The opportunity 
came at last in 1870, when Napoleon III fell before the Prus- 
sians, and the French guard in Rome was recalled to meet the 
Teutonic invader. Then, with little bloodshed, but against 
the protests of the pope, the Italian arms breached the walls 
of Rome and entered the city by the Porta Pia. (Jnce there, 
there was no going back. "We are in Rome, and here we shall 
remain," said Victor Emmanuel on making his triumphal 
entry in 1871. The overwhelmingly favorable vote of the 
people of Rome themselves only strengthened the monarchy 
in this determination. 

The question of the status of the church and especially of 
the pope had yet to be settled. Few Italians wished the com- 
plete withdrawal of the papacy from Italy; rather the con- 
trary. Not only did it increase Italy's prestige in the world 
to be the seat and home of the church, but the Italians them- 
selves were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. It is said that 
an Italian is Roman Catholic or nothing, and indeed the 
number of Protestants in Italy is almost insignificant. The 
danger of foreign intervention on behalf of the papacy was 
also always to be feared. Thus a peaceful settlement to keep 
the papacy at Rome was dictated by circumstances. 

In 1870, therefore, the government proceeded to pass the 
so-called Law of the Papal Guaranties, which became effective 
in May, 1871. In the debates preceding the passage of this 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 151 

act were revived the various earlier projects for settlement 
of the church question, and especially Cavour's plan of a 
"free church in a free state." The law passed assumed that 
there was a clear and known line of demarcation between 
temporal and spiritual affairs, a wholly unwarranted assump- 
tion as it now appears, at least for Italy, and proceeded to 
guarantee the pope sufficient income and liberty "to fulfil 
all the functions of his spiritual ministry/' not neglecting 
even to assure him of very definite temporal rights also. He 
was guaranteed from state revenues an income of over $600,- 
000 annually, equal to what his estates had been bringing 
him, together with entire control of the Vatican and Lateran 
palaces with their grounds and appurtenances. His person 
was declared sacred and inviolable; his rights, when any- 
where in the kingdom, were to be those of a visiting sover- 
eign. His correspondence and his telegraphic communications 
were to be free from molestation by officers of the state. The 
government specifically renounced the right to appoint 
bishops, but the law reserved to the king his existing right 
to appoint to other benefices which were part of the royal 
patronage. With the exception of acts affecting appointments 
or the property of the Church, no ecclesiastical acts were hence- 
forth to require government sanction. Thus the church was 
made entirely free as to its teachings and doctrine, and even 
as to its punishment of ecclesiastical offenses, though no act 
or punishment could become legal which was against the laws 
of the state. The state in concluding promised to pass a law 
for the reorganization and administration of church property 
in Italy. 

That the law of the guaranties was passed in a sincere 
effort to settle fairly the entire question cannot now be 
doubted. That its terms could have been much improved by 
more careful consideration at the time is also hardly open to 
dispute. But its chief weakness lay in the fact that it was 
made by the conqueror for the conquered. The Pope was 
unable to bring himself to the point of accepting its terms. 
The act spoke of him as free in the spiritual realm and 
made his person inviolable, incapable of arrest, detention, or 



152 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

penalty. Incapable of being imprisoned, he took prison walls 
unto himself, proclaiming to loyal Catholics throughout the 
world that he was being kept in duress in the Vatican. The 
law gave him a legal claim to a large annuity from the state 
treasury in lieu of the income he formerly had from his estates. 
This money he has refused to claim, for he still denies the 
validity of the acts which deprived him of his domains; and 
therefore he cannot without recognizing the "robber's right" 
receive as a gift any part of the ' ' ill-gotten spoils. ' ' 

Thus from its very inception, the Pope's hostility to the 
law has prevented its proper enforcement. In the course 
of over forty years, numerous points have arisen for inter- 
pretation, and few have been settled. The government, being 
the authority to enforce the law, has been subjected to con- 
stant criticism by the Church, which has assumed consist- 
ently the attitude of a weak and persecuted society. That the 
government merits much criticism is undoubtedly true. It 
has been, perhaps, too slow in giving up its control of the ap- 
pointment of clergy, and seems at times to have used the power 
for political purposes. It still controls much ecclesiastical 
property and distributes to the Church in return less revenue 
than the clergy had expected. The questions of civil marriage 
and religious education are still unsolved and grievous. 

The government and the anti-Catholics, on the other hand, 
have reason to be exceedingly bitter against the Church. 
They feel that in trying to be upright they have positively 
leaned ever backwards, endangering the very stability of 
the state in the attempt to be fair to the Church, while the 
popes have traitorously connived to bring about foreign in- 
tervention. For thirty years after the settlement of 1870, a 
strong but dwindling Catholic party in France openly en- 
deavored to induce the French government to restore the papal 
estates, to make the Pope once more a Pope-King. This 
movement the papacy did not discourage. At one time Pope 
Leo XIII prevented Emperor Franz-Joseph from visiting 
King Humbert in Rome, saying that it would be an insult to 
the Catholic Church. To weaken Italy, and to make possible 
the restoration of the temporal power, Leo XIII would perhaps 



FKEE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 153 

have wrecked the Triple Alliance had opportunity offered. 1 

These charges, which can be substantiated, clearly show 
that the Vatican has not accepted in good faith either the 
unification of Italy or the fait accompli of 1870-1871. It has 
instead used its influence to embroil Italy with foreign powers. 
But it has gone even further, for it has attempted to weaken 
Italy by causing dissensions at home. The principal effort 
in this direction has been to discourage Catholics from voting 
or from recognizing the government of united Italy by co- 
operation in any way. As early as 1883 Catholics were told 
that it was "inexpedient" to vote in parliamentary elections, 
though municipal elections were not to be similarly shunned. 
From that day until the momentous election of 1904 the 
Vatican maintained its attitude, and the mere fact that Catho- 
lics were generally too wise, patriotic, and independent to 
obey the injunction does not absolve the Vatican from blame. 

Thus has the papacy worked against the perfection of the 
unity of Italy, and not without some success. Clearly the 
problem of Church and state relations was one which could 
not be avoided and just as clearly it is as yet unsolved. No 
pope has yet fully and unequivocally renounced all thought 
of restoring the temporal power. 

The revocation of the non expedit, forced on the papacy 
by the extraordinary conditions in Italy following the gen- 
eral strike of 1904, was only partial, while one result has been 
to raise the issue of clericalism again in Italy. 

During the present war, the clericals have failed to take a 
strong pro-Italian stand, and may, indeed, have some difficulty 
in clearing themselves of the charges of pro-Germanism, and 
assistance to the enemy, now becoming current even in very 
responsibly written books. 2 The slow but steady movement 
since about 1900 toward a more conciliatory policy on both 
sides probably received a complete check when, at the begin- 
ning of the war, the Pope showed an entire inability to stand 

i Bolton King, and Thomas Okey, "Italy To-day," 1913 Ed., p. 45. 

2Cf. William Kay Wallace, "Greater Italy," 1917, 175-178; cf. also 
E. J. Dillon, "From the Triple to the Quadruple Alliance," 1915, 178- 
184. 



151 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

out against the destruction of Belgium and Poland or even 
to comprehend, much less to sympathize with, the national 
aspirations of Italy. 

Directly related to the difficulties between Italy and the 
papacy was the extreme unhappiness which existed from 
1860 almost down to 1900 in the relations of Italy and France. 
Some distrust of France went back, of course, to the days 
of 1859 and 1860, when Napoleon III suddenly dropped the 
campaign against Austria before driving her completely out 
of Italy, and yet insisted upon the cession of Savoy to France 
before' the unification of Italy began. Napoleon had found 
indeed that he had overreached himself. In warring on 
Austrian domination of Italy, he had encouraged the revolt 
of the Papal States also, and thus had struck a blow at the 
temporal power. Turning to view the results of this act, he 
seems to have observed that he was alienating the necessary 
support of the Catholics at home. Therefore, as if to re- 
store himself in the good graces of his own people, he sent 
French troops to Rome to support the papacy in its claims 
of temporal authority over this, its last stronghold. For 
ten years, then, Italy was restrained by French arms from 
making Rome the capital. For ten years every Italian move- 
ment against Rome risked a war between France and Italy. 
With the cry "Rome or death" upon his lips the popular 
hero Garibaldi twice tried to make Rome the capital of Italy. 
On the second occasion, he was defeated by French arms 
at Mentana (1867), a defeat which Italians never forgave. 

The withdrawal of the French garrison in 1870 during the 
Franco-Prussian War did not soften the hatred of the Italian 
republicans and anti-clericals for France, though Rome was 
made the capital at last. There began at once in France a 
movement among the Catholics to restore the temporal power. 
Had Italy but known it, Gambetta and the republicans in 
France were themselves during the seventies to wage a suc- 
cessful if not final fight against clericalism. But the republi- 
cans were still a minority in France. Thiers, who then 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 155 

headed the provisional government, had definite clerical lean- 
ings, and it was from France that the papacy looked for 
succor. For thirty years the clerical party in France showed 
great vitality. French pilgrims to Rome on several occasions 
irritated the Italians by indiscreet utterances concerning the 
restoration of the Pope-King. Almost down to 1900 Italy 
feared and the papacy hoped to see French bayonets once 
more in Rome. 

A distrust thus engendered was doomed to find other sus- 
picions on which to feed, other reasons for its continuance. 
In 1881 France occupied Tunis, just across from Sicily. Bis- 
marck suggested it, desiring to keep France busy abroad, while 
England offered no objections. France had fairly good pre- 
texts, but Italy was aroused and indignant. She had had 
some designs on Tunis also, and certainly did not relish the 
thought of France controlling the whole northern coast of 
Africa. Thus Italy, which would have been far more com- 
fortable in an alliance with France, was repelled from that 
measure and forced either to go forward alone, risking a war 
with France if the latter should determine to restore the 
temporal power, or to ally herself with the eastern enemy 
Austria, and Prussia. The latter step was the one taken. 
The Dual Alliance became the Triple Alliance in 1882. Italy 
may have thought it a great stroke. In some ways the move 
was inevitable. But Italy had to sacrifice "her most sacred 
aspiration" while in the alliance, namely, her desire for 
the unredeemed parts of Italy, and she awoke years later to 
a knowledge that she had been a makeweight rather than a full 
participating member of the alliance. 1 

Relations with France were destined to become even worse 
before they became better. In 1887 Italy adopted a high 
protective tariff and in 1888 the treaty of commerce with 
France was broken. Then followed a short tariff war, in 
which Italian trade both in manufactures and agricultural 
products suffered grievously. From 1889 trade was pos- 

i See speech of Premier Salandra to Chamber of Deputies, May 20, 
1915; Baron Sonnino's public note of May 23, 1915. 



156 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

sible on somewhat better terms but was little revived. Rather 
it sought new directions and not until 1898 was a new and 
liberal French commercial treaty made. 

By this time French-Italian relations were reaching a better 
understanding. The papacy had almost ceased to hope for 
restoration of the temporal power by force of French arms, 
and in 1905, with the separation of church and state in France, 
the possibility of such action passed away forever. But al- 
ready the evil results of the fear and hatred of France were 
manifest and not to be recalled. Italy had sacrificed her 
independence of action, her national aspirations, and in a 
sense a part of her duty, by the forced alliance with Austria 
and Germany. Not until she denounced the alliance in 1915 
did she assume once more that free and independent position 
among the nations of the world to which she was entitled. 

It was especially her desire to incorporate "unredeemed" 
portions of Italian territory that Italy had to give up while 
in the "unholy" Triple Alliance. The problem of the 
Irredenta has long been interesting to Italians. The whole 
struggle of the Italian-speaking people from the days of the 
first uprisings against Austria down to 1870 was a struggle 
to redeem Italy from the sword and oppression of the foreign 
tyrant. Mazzini would have included even Corsica as an 
Italian territory to be redeemed. 

Suffice it to say that the task of redemption was far from 
complete in 1861. The Trentino in the north center, Italian- 
speaking and located on the Italian Adige River, was still 
Austrian. Venice and Venetia, with all the Italian-speaking 
land north, east, and south to Trieste, were also under the 
Hapsburgs. Rome itself was still denied to Italy. 

In 1866 Prussia, desirous of ending Austrian predominance 
in German affairs, and of placing herself at the head of the 
Germanic federation, made war upon Austria in alliance with 
Italy. Though it was not accomplished by the force of Italian 
arms, Austria was quickly defeated. The Italians, failing in 
their part of the campaign, won no battles ; but the Prussians 
had profited much by the Italian alliance, since Austria 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 157 

had been compelled to divide her forces. Quickly forced to 
sue for peace, Austria was astounded at the lenience of the 
Prussian terms. Prussia first, in violation of her treaty with 
Italy, made a separate treaty with Austria, and then refused 
to back up Italy in her demands. The latter, in claiming 
the Trentino, undoubtedly went beyond what she was entitled 
to by the treaty with Prussia, but Prussia clearly was playing 
to mollify Austria rather than to support Italy. Venetia was 
at last ceded to Italy, 1 but it was Venetia bounded by the 
Judrio River on the east, leaving the bridge-head of Gorizia, 
and the important passes in the hands of Austria. 

Beyond the political boundaries fixed for Italy in 1859 
and 1867 lay at that time much territory called Italian and 
many purely Italian-speaking communities, mainly in Austria. 
These constituted the Irredenta. The passage of fifty years 
has made little change in the situation, save that the propor- 
tion of non-Italian-speaking people has risen considerably in 
parts of the Trieste district owing to the immigration of 
Slavs. The Trentino proper contains over 330,000 Italians 
and less than 10,000 of other races. The upper Adige valley, 
however, is preponderantly German-speaking, but as its 
population is smaller the balance throughout the entire Tren- 
tino region is distinctly on the Italian side — about two to 
one in a population of under 600,000. 

Farther east Italy makes no claims until Gorizia and East- 
ern Friuli are reached. Here the Germans are very few, but 
the Italians are slightly overbalanced by Slavs, many of recent 
immigration. In Trieste, also claimed as a part of the 
Irredenta, a city of over 200,000, over 70 per cent, are Italian. 
In Istria the Slavs again outnumber the Italians who form 
about 40 per cent, or 160,000 in a total population of 400,000. 
In Dalmatia the Italians are, however, far outnumbered by 
Slavs and others. Indeed, the rural districts almost every- 
where at the head of the Adriatic are predominantly non- 
Italian. 

i The terms of the treaty of cession of 1866 were very hastily drafted, 
and the boundaries of Venetia most carelessly delimited, with Austria 
being left in control of most of the strategic points in the Julian Alps. 



158 THE HOOTS OF THE WAR 

The Italian claims to the Irredenta are principally three. 
The weakest is the historical. There was no Italy before 1860, 
save in a geographical sense, and to argue that Trieste, for 
example, should belong to Italy because it was once eon- 
trolled by Venice, is trivial. Wisely enough, the Irredentists 

[•lit little stress on the historical argument. The second claim 

is geographic. The northern and eastern boundaries of Italy 
are mainly. purely arbitrary and correspond to no true geo- 
graphic divisions. From a military point of view, too, they 
are unfair, since Austria has been left in control of all the 
strong passes. If is characteristic thai Austria controls the 
headwaters of many streams which are mainly [talian. Aus- 
tria controls the upper reaches and Italy the lower of some 
of the same valleys. 

The final argument is that of racial, social, and linguistic 
affinity. The people in the Irredenta are largely, in some 
places almost exclusively Italian, with a passionate attachment 
to Italy. Wherever other races preponderate, it is due to 
active efforts on the part of Austria to suppress the Italian 
language and Italian schools, and to import large numbers 
of other people, especially Slavs. Against this oppression 
the Italians in the "unredeemed" territories have fought 
successfully for fifty years. 

Before Italy entered the Triple Alliance (1882) there had 
been several outbursts of popular feeling in favor of con- 
quering the Irredenta. Garibaldi fought in vain for the 
Trentino in 18G6. In 1878 and 1879 there were organized 
popular demonstrations, when Austria had been made pro- 
tector of Bosnia, to oust her from "unredeemed Italy." A 
few years later the signing of the Triple Alliance imposed 
on the Italian government the necessity of suppressing 
Irre dent ism o. In the nineties Crispi uttered strong words of 
warning, and for a time the movement received a quietus 
under his repressive measures. The movement would not 
down entirely, and when, from about 1900 onwards, the fact 
became more and more clear that Austria's Balkan policy 
was against the vital interests of Italy, the agitation revived. 
The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria in 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 159 

1908, finally proving to Italy that her ally could not be 
trusted, was the signal for the old movement to take on a 
new life. 

Finally, in 1914 the movement to annex the Irredenta was 
adopted by the Italian government as its own policy. The 
negotiations with Austria to this end failed completely. Italy 
was at last compelled to break the Triple Alliance and to 
take up the gage of battle to protect her vital interests. When 
so doing, in a circular letter to the powers, she denounced 
the persistence with which the Austro-Hungarian government 
had tried to destroy all vestige of Italian nationality and 
civilization in the Eastern Adriatic, as indicating the "deep 
rooted sentiment of hostility and aversion for Italy" prevail- 
ing among influential classes in Austria-Hungary. 1 

While these and other urgent questions perplexed the young 
kingdom, a new peril was creeping upon it unseen and un- 
suspected. It was the sinister influence of Germany, gained 
by peaceful penetration, which for a while in 1914 and 1915 
almost paralyzed the kingdom, depriving it of a will of its; 
own. 

The evidences of this penetration are only beginning to come 
to us in America, but the origin seems to have been financial. 
When Italy joined the Triple Alliance, aiming thus at France, 
France was naturally displeased. The dislike became greater 
when, a few years later, the commercial treaty was denounced. 
A brief tariff war then ensued, followed presently (1893) 
by France's dumping on the market a large amount of Italian 
securities, apparently owing to a trivial war-scare. A panic 
ensued in Italy, and she was practically forced into the arms 
of the bankers of Germany, her chief ally. The next year 
German capital founded the Italian Commercial Bank (Banca 
Commerciale Italiana) at Milan, and the process of penetra- 
tion was begun. 

As the bank grew in resources it grew in influence, and 
its next step was to control commerce and industry as a branch 
of its banking business. German students and trade-spies 

i "Italy's Green Book,'' 1915, Baron Sonnino's note of May 23, 1915. 



160 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

were employed in increasing numbers to seek out means of ex- 
tending German business in Italy. Italian business men who 
received credit from the bank, were given to understand that 
they must buy some or all of their goods in Germany. Cer- 
tain industries, such as the electric power business, fell com- 
pletely under German domination. 

From financial and industrial control, the German in- 
fluence began to extend itself into the field of public opinion 
and politics. Financially needy or purchasable newspapers 
began to fall under Teutonic control. Soon there was the 
use of money also to swing elections and the process of making 
Italy a mere appanage of Germany was on its way to com- 
pletion. Other less important factors, such as the close 
proximity of Italy to Germany, some international mar- 
riages, and the education of young Italians, especially army 
men, in Germany, were supporting causes of the great in- 
fluence which Germany exercised in Italy in the stressful days 
of 1914 and 1915. 

When the war began Germany used every effort to keep 
Italy from going into it. Italy's interests were so clearly 
opposed to Austria in the latter 's Balkan policy, that the best 
German leaders really hoped for was to keep Italy neutral. 
The pro-Germans in Italy assumed at once the name of neu- 
tralists. The papal-clerical party seemed to be mainly of 
that stamp. So too was the powerful popular leader Giolitti ; 
so were many senators and deputies. A former German Im- 
perial Chancellor, Prince von Biilow, was sent to Rome to 
direct the campaign to keep Italy on the sidelines. 

For weeks and months Italy was unable to see things as 
they really were. Popular sympathy was with France, Bel- 
gium, and England, but the pressure to stay neutral was 
heavy, while the issues were not entirely clear. But a few 
outstanding leaders, among them Baron Sydney Sonnino, 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, kept their heads clear and their 
minds upon the interests of the kingdom. They were able 
to control affairs despite the German propaganda until the 
people were ready to listen to reason and patriotism. Then 
the bandages were quickly removed from Italy's eyes. She 



FREE ITALY AND ITS CONSOLIDATION 161 

saw how the Triple Alliance had bound her, absolutely stop- 
ping the process of unification, how the treaty had been dis- 
regarded by the other participants, especially Austria, with 
impunity, and how under its cover Germany had established 
her commercial and political power within Italy itself. From 
the Austrian oppressor of the days before 1860 the Italians 
seemed to have freed themselves only to find a new master in 
Germany. 

It was then that Italy asserted her "sacred egoism, " her 
unity and independence, her right and her ability to stand 
alone. In a memorable speech in the Italian capitol on June 
2, 1915, Premier Salandra proclaimed, amid the plaudits of 
his countrymen, "No vassalage, no protectorate under any 
one.' , This was Italy's declaration of independence. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE NEW GERMAN EM TIRE AND ITS GENIUS 

OX January 18, 1871, while yet the cannon were booming 
around starving and defiant Paris, there was a remark- 
able state spectacle at Versailles, the old residence town of 
Louis XIV, then occupied by the besieging Teutonic armies. 
Before a brilliant assemblage of German princes and generals 
in the famous "Hall of Mirrors," with the Grand Duke of 
Baden to lead the "Hochs" and "Vwats," William I, King 
of Prussia, was proclaimed "German Emperor" in token of 
the fact that he had been accepted by all the other sovereigns 
and free cities of Germany as the hereditary president of the 
newly founded German Empire. From that day to this 
the interest and power of Prussia have largely merged in the 
greater interests and power of this imperial state which Bis- 
marck and his sovereign had founded. For the next forty- 
three years the newly created Empire remained the great 
salient fact for Europe and almost for the entire world. In 
the place of the old disjointed Germanic Federation, dis- 
tracted by innumerable forms of particularism, the battle- 
ground for foreign armies, without colonies, merchant marine 
or fleet, and economically far behind England or France, there 
was to be an enormous state more populous than France, 
with the most formidable army in the world, consolidated and 
controlled by a remarkably efficient and energetic govern- 
ment, and speedily able to build merchant and battle-ships, 
to seize colonies, to meddle in the affairs of Turkey, Morocco, 
Oceania and China, and compete with Great Britain in almost 
every form of economic enterprise. All this transformation 
was wrought between 1862, when Bismarck assumed the charge 
of Prussian affairs, and 1871 — the year of French defeat and 
German unity and triumph. There have been few greater 
overturns in the history of the world. 

162 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 163 

Fortunately for the peace of Europe, Bismarck wisely and 
sincerely believed that after the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine 
Germany was "satiated," and that what she needed was not 
more of victorious war, but peaceful consolidation and internal 
development. To be sure he kept up the strength of the army 
and took every precaution to protect himself against Russia 
and France. But the great chancellor seized every oppor- 
tunity also to proclaim that German greatness was no menace 
to the world's peace — and on the whole the world believed 
him. This was true down to 1890 — the year of his downfall : 
and what sane American in 1890 could possibly have said 
that his own country would ever be involved in an indescrib- 
ably expensive and bloody war with Germany, over an issue 
that nominally started over a quarrel between Vienna and 
St. Petersburg, about the right of the Czar to protect Serbia 
from the wrath of Austria ? Yet twenty-seven years after Bis- 
marck quitted power the unthinkable had become reality, 
Unconsciously in part, he and his generation in Germany had 
sown the wind. The next generation was to reap the whirl- 
wind. To understand the causes of the debacle of 1914, one 
must also understand the genius of Prussia which in 1871 
gained the mastery of the German people. 

This people of Germany was admittedly one of the predomi- 
nant units of the human race. In almost every form oi 
cultural achievement it had either surpassed or crowded the 
other leaders hard. Music, art, philosophy, theology, the 
sciences, whether applied or theoretical — it competed oi 
triumphed in all. But in one great form of human endeavor 
the Germans had not triumphed — they had never played 
their due part in the human struggle for political liberty. 11 
is possible to find historical reasons for this: the failure oi 
the Medieval Empire and the friction between the multi- 
farious petty princes. But the fact remained. England had 
written very many chapters in the "Golden Book of Liberty.'' 
So had the city republics of mediaeval Italy, and the mountain 
cantons of Switzerland, likewise the stout burgher-communi- 
ties of Holland and Flanders. Even in France under the 
absolute monarchy the memory of the mediaeval ' ' States Gen- 



164 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

eral" had never been forgotten, and was to revive magically in 
that year of wonder, 1789. Germany had added no chapters 
to the story. Her heroes had been either valorous paladins 
and princes like Frederick Barbarossa, or scholars and master- 
theologians like Martin Luther. The numerous "free cities'' 
of her later Middle Ages had been only "free" as respected 
the control of some outside elector or duke. Within they had 
been usually governed by a privileged class of burghers or 
"patricians," with little enough share at most times for the 
common people. 

It might have been imagined that the Protestant Reforma- 
tion with its accent on the right of the individual to select his 
own view of religious truth would have given a great impetus 
to the development of political liberty also^ It did really 
the reverse. Luther was intensely interested in the triumph 
of his religious cause. He cared little for political con- 
siderations and he greatly needed firm helpers against the 
Pope. He therefore threw his whole enormous influence in 
favor of strengthening the power of the German princes. 
The new Lutheran church was on the whole far more de- 
pendent on the government than the old Catholic church 
had been. Indeed after Luther's death and the loss of the 
original impulses of his movement the Lutheran clergy (it 
is not unfair to say) became very convenient instruments in 
the hands of the average prince, for keeping his subjects in 
order. Certain familiar Bible texts have been worn thread- 
bare in German Protestant pulpits — "Fear God, honor the 
king," " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," and 
the like. Church and state thus made an extremely close 
alliance. It is needless to say that the state was not the loser 
by the bargain. 1 

About one-third of Germany proper indeed remained 
Catholic, but this fact did not help to promote political liberty. 
Outside of the Austrian lands and Bavaria almost all the 

i The absence of bishops, with their claims to secular consideration 
and social prestige, in the Lutheran Church, and the substitution for 
them of mere official superintendents, controlled completely by the 
prince, of course increased the grip of the governments upon German 
Protestantism. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 165 

German Catholics were subject to "Prince-Bishops" (e. g. 
of Mainz, Koln, Wiirzburg, etc.) narrow-minded, petty, 
essentially secular despots, who were only too glad to use 
their spiritual authority to eke out their ordinary civil power. 
Thus both the old church and the new worked against the 
development of any kind of democracy. 

In all German history down to 1848 there was never any 
well-matured uprising of a great mass of the people to secure 
political rights, although there had been some frantic and 
desperate revolts of the ignorant peasantry (as e. g. in Martin 
Luther's time) to secure redress from brutal oppression by 
the petty nobles. These beast-like revolts had been quieted 
in blood, and some of the princes had been wise enough to 
remedy the grosser evils, but there had been serfage, accom- 
panied by outrageous privileges for the nobility in Germany 
down to Napoleon's conquests. The subjects of a German 
prince had been often not much better than biped cattle, such 
as were the miserable Hessians whose ruler shipped them 
for a price to America, when George III of England found it 
hard to get his own self-respecting subjects to enlist to coerce 
George Washington and his fellow "rebels." 

The chief curse of Germany in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries had been, of course, her ruinous sub-division 
into innumerable states. When Napoleon I went through the 
land, wrecking old institutions like a human whirlwind, there 
had been nearly three hundred principalities, little and great, 
"free cities," etc., all pretending to be part of the now dis- 
integrating Holy Roman Empire. Some of these "states" 
had been comically small, as, e. g., that of Count William of 
Buckeburg who had dominions that could be crossed by a 
single old-style cannon shot, but who solemnly built a pre- 
tentious fortress to defend "a range of wooden huts, an ob- 
servatory, and a potato field." Some of the states, on the 
other hand, were respectable small countries — e. g., Saxony, 
Bavaria and Wurtemberg. There was one, however, which 
was still larger and had been growing between 1648 and 1800, 
to the great alarm of its neighbors — the most eastern large 
state of Germany — Prussia. 



166 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Prussia had been the creation of a line of remarkable 
princes, who had seemed able to provide one fairly capable 
sovereign after another. In the seventeenth century the 
"Great Elector," Frederick "William, had made his state of 
Brandenburg-Prussia, though it was still poor, and territori- 
ally disjointed, into a fairly formidable military monarchy. 
Early in the seventeenth century this one-time "electorate" 
had become the "Kingdom of Prussia." x Between 1713 and 
1740 had reigned King Frederick William I, a hard, tyran- 
nous, coarse and crabbed man, but one who (after his lights) 
had labored with remarkable efficiency and success for the 
benefit of his subjects. "Salvation is of the Lord. All else 
is in my province ! " he had asserted ; and he had lived up to 
the dictum. He left a large and well-organized army and the 
nucleus of a powerful state to his remarkably able son, 
Frederick the Great. 

Frederick the Great (1740-1786) made Prussia one of the 
great powers of Europe. In two sustained and terrible wars 
he defeated Austria, France, and Russia, now singly and now 
with them all allied against him. He won a name as one of 
the great captains of history — worthy of a pedestal only a 
little lower than Napoleon's. Many of his traits were admir- 
able. He not only won battles but he wrought great things 
for the cultural advancement of his people. He was the 
model for "enlightened despots," but his methods were such 
as to constitute an evil example for his successors. Interna- 
tional law (even as then known) and likewise treaties he vio- 
lated most brazenly. He gained a name for bad faith which 
would have been his ruin had he not been a military genius. 
In 1740, without warning, he attacked Austria and seized Si- 
lesia — to which his claims were very flimsy — almost solely be- 
cause Austria was in dynastic troubles and could not defend 
the coveted province. In 1756 he began the "Seven Years' 

1 It was called "Prussia" and not "Brandenburg" (the other half of 
the original state) because the province of Prussia was not strictly 
part of the old Germanic Empire, and its ruler might therefore claim 
royal honors without seeming to lord it too much over the other Ger- 
man princes who were still nominally subject to the "Emperor" at 
Vienna. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 167 

War" by being the aggressor against Austria and France as 
soon as he believed conflict "inevitable"; and since he needed 
the helpless neutral country of Saxony for strategic reasons, 
he entered, violated and exploited that perfectly innocent 
land, as if it had been in league with his enemies. 1 He 
cynically confessed to a public immorality which most of his 
contemporaries had the decency at least to disavow. "The 
question of right is an affair of the ministers, ' ' he once wrote, 
". . . it is time to consider it in secret, for the orders to the 
troops have been given." — "Take what you can," he wrote 
again, "You are never wrong unless you are obliged to give 
back." This man, then, was what Macaulay called him, a 
tyrant "without fear, without faith and without mercy." 
Yet his success was so great : his creative qualities enabled him 
to lift so high the fabric of Prussian greatness, that to his 
successors he seemed like a demi-god. It was a species of 
treason to suggest that a given practice was wrong provided 
Frederick the Great had sanctioned it: — and very many of 
Frederick's usages were to be revived in 1914. 

After this king, Prussia fell on evil clays. Napoleon de- 
feated her and maltreated her worse than almost any other 
of his national victims. But at least the overrunning of prac- 
tically all of Germany by the French brought the destruction 
of many old abuses. Of the three hundred odd ' ' princes ' ' and 
free cities before 1800, nearly all the weaker ones were de- 
stroyed and absorbed by the larger states. There were only 
thirty-five reigning "Majesties, Highnesses, and Serenities" 
left in 1817, and four free cities. Better still, serfdom was 
abolished even in ultra-conservative Prussia, Other modern- 
izing reforms came to pass under the French whip and spur. 
In short, things were never as bad after 1814 when Napoleon 
departed for Elba, as they had been before the Corsican's 
shadow crossed the Teutonic lands. 

i The violation of Saxony by Frederick "undoubtedly seemed a decisive 
and happy precedent for the German high command in 1914 when it 
decided on the quite similar violation of Belgium. Bernhardi, the Pan- 
German author, in 1911 took pains to commend the examples set by 
Frederick, especially the manner in which he struck boldly, and began 
his wars the moment they seemed useful to his policy. 



168 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Napoleon was driven back over the Rhine by a great 
alliance of the nations, but the Germans played a noble part 
therein. Made frantic by the outrageous oppression of the 
invaders, the Prussian people for the first time really asserted 
themselves. They almost coerced their timid king, Fred- 
erick William III, into drawing the sword; and they were 
the backbone of the coalition (with Austria, Russia and Eng- 
land) which defeated Napoleon at Leipzig (1813) in the 
terrific "Battle of the Nations" and ultimately hurled him 
from his throne. There had been a strong hope among the 
leaders of this patriotic movement that as reward for the 
expulsion of the foreign enemy there would come the granting 
of a free constitution to Prussia. Frederick William III did 
indeed in 1814 and again in 1815 solemnly promise to his 
subjects a constitution; but the instant there ceased to be any 
need of conciliating them to get common action against the 
French, the king fell under ultra-conservative and reactionary 
influences. He lived till 1840, without redeeming this promise. 
In some of the lesser states of Germany, constitutions (often 
not very liberal) were granted; but already Prussia embraced 
almost 50 per cent, of the German people — omitting the Aus- 
trians. So the first great opportunity for establishing a free 
system of government for the Fatherland was lost. 

In 1840 began the reign of Frederick William IV of Prussia, 
a brilliant, unstable, exceedingly opinionated man who was 
destined presently to become insane and to die in 1861 after 
four years of confinement. This king met the rising demands 
of his subjects for a constitution with an angry negation. 
In 1843 he publicly asserted that he would never allow "to 
come between Almighty God and this land a blotted parch- 
ment (i. e., a constitution) to rule us with paragraphs, and to 
replace the ancient sacred bond of loyalty." 

But the liberal movement in Germany was swelling to a 
point where it seemed likely to burst every barrier. Nearly 
all the intelligent elements of the nation were crying out for a 
real federal constitution for all Germany to replace the 
miserably weak "confederation" which had been founded in 
1815 under the domination of Austria; also in each separate 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 169 

state, but especially in Prussia, they demanded a local con- 
stitution securing the essentials of freedom. The revolution 
of 1848 in France and the temporary establishment of a 
French republic had its tremendous echoes beyond the Rhine. 
Popular uprisings shook every German throne and especially 
that of Frederick William IV. There was fighting in the 
streets of Berlin. This king and the lesser princes bowed 
before the blast. A national parliament was convoked at 
Frankfort to give a constitution to all Germany, and its 
members were chosen by popular vote. For an instant it 
seemed as if the Fatherland was about to become a "free 
country" in the best sense of the term. 

Then followed one of the greatest misfortunes in history. 
The 586 deputies were men without experience in debate or 
law-making. There were very many professors of political 
science, each man full of fine theories which differed widely 
from those of his colleagues. There were very few practical 
men of accepted leadership. Upon a certain problem there 
were "nine projects and 189 orators." A dangerous amount 
of time was wasted over fine questions about "the bill of 
rights. ' ' There were radical Republicans who tried to declare 
a republic upon the spot and to send the princes to the scrap- 
heap. So the days crept by, ardor cooled, dissensions thick- 
ened, and it became increasingly evident that Austria would 
never consent (unless after a war) to any scheme which ex- 
cluded her from the leadership of a revivified German Empire. 
This the German patriots could not grant. 1 They at last pre- 
pared a constitution for a federal empire of a pretty lib- 
eral type, and offered the imperial crown to Frederick Wil- 
liam IV. (1849.) 

That unstable prince had grown disgusted with the whole 
popular movement. He wanted, indeed, an imperial crown, 
not by gift of the people but by gift of the lesser princes — the 

i The chief objection to Austria was of course that she was only 
"German" in a minor fraction of her dominions. The Frankfort par- 
liament was not anxious to see the new Empire controlled by a state 
wherein the Magyars, Czechs, Croats, Slovenes, Poles, etc., were the 
largest element. 



170 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

only rulers whose rights he recognized. He rejected the 
proffer by the parliament of what he contemptuously called 
"a crown of mud and wood." "If any one is to award 
the crown of the German nation," he asserted, "it is myself 
and my equals who should give it." His action, the hostile 
attitude of Austria, which was very loath to let go of her 
general supervision over German affairs, and the jealousy of 
many of the minor princes towards any scheme to advance 
Prussia, made the whole project break down. The parliament 
sorrowfully dispersed. A few radical leaders induced some 
Baden regiments to obey them and started an insurrection in 
South Germany to establish a republic. A Prussian army put 
down this brave but impracticable adventure. Many Repub- 
licans fled to France, Switzerland or America. Those who 
tarried were arrested, and some of them were shot. These 
were the days when Carl Schurz and many another of the 
best blood of Germany escaped into Transatlantic exile. Great 
numbers of other Teutons, profoundly discouraged at the 
failure of their patriotic hopes and the miserable plight of 
their country, emigrated more voluntarily. In Prussia itself 
Frederick AVilliam IV was canceling his promised reforms 
and proclaiming the grievously illiberal constitution of 1850. 
It was a time of pessimism and anguish for every freedom- 
loving man in Germany. 

There are times when great calamities befall nations, calami- 
ties the true seriousness whereof cannot be appreciated until 
long years afterward. If the American war for Independence 
had failed, if the Bourbon monarchy had crushed the French 
Revolution, if Abraham Lincoln had failed to preserve the 
North American Union — the results of the disaster would 
have remained to curse America and France respectively — 
and other nations too — for many decades. And so it was 
with the abortive German Revolution of 1848-49. For a few 
happy months it had seemed as if without prolonged blood- 
shed, with the acquiescence of the princes, and by the joyous 
agreement of the people of all parts of Germany, a liberal 
federative Empire was about to be established, uniting the 
Fatherland but with due preservation of local antonomy and 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 171 

local interests. The success of this movement would have 
established the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, and 
of the subordination of the princes to the popular will. Ger- 
many would thus have become a great united free nation with- 
out invoking militarism. If, however, she had wished for 
colonial expansion, there was still in the 1850 's and '60 's 
plenty of available territories in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, 
unappropriated by France, England, or any other civilized 
power, and easy for the new Germany to annex. 

Now all hopes of a liberal German Empire had for the 
moment gone glimmering. The failure had not merely dis- 
appointed the aspirations of the liberals. It had apparently 
been caused by the sheer political incapacity of the liberals 
themselves. Hereafter the conservatives could openly as- 
sert that monarchy was the only government possible for 
Germans, because, as an ex-chancellor (Von Bulow) wrote 
in 1913, "despite the abundance of merits and the great qual- 
ities with which the German nation is endowed, political tal- 
ent has been denied it." 1 Every future champion of liberal- 
ism had the pitiful failure of 1848-49 cast in his face. Not 
merely was the coming of genuine liberty to Germany post- 
poned but the chance for expansion beyond seas was lost. It 
was to be well after 1880 before the empire which Bismarck 
founded gained sufficient stability to pursue a colonial policy. 
By that time England and France had preempted the best 
parts of the African field and Japan was growing strong in 
Asia. If the Fatherland then desired really useful and 
promising colonies they must be won by the sword. 

After a period of anxious discouragement, liberalism lifted 
its head again, especially in Prussia. Grievously monarchical 
and oligarchic as was the constitution which in 1850 Frederick 
William IV had grudgingly conceded to his people (see p. 
182), it was better than nothing. The liberal impulse was 

i Considering the very honorable record in American political life o1 
many Germans, or Americans of pure Germanic ancestry, this statemenl 
may be flatly declared to be untrue. The home conditions of the Teu 
tonie race were, however, very ill suited for developing efficient political 
instincts. 



172 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

so strong that despite a franchise which peculiarly favored 
the wealthy and the noble the Prussian Chamber of Deputies 
became a mouth-piece for protest and agitation. The major- 
ity of the members stood for greater popular liberties and 
drastic general reforms. In 1858 Frederick William IV 's 
mind gave way. He ended his days in pitiful confinement. 
His brother and heir, Prince William (soon King William I) 
was proclaimed regent. The new ruler was primarily a mili- 
tary man. He had (as will be seen) many personal virtues, 
but he had an intense dislike of liberalism. When he took 
over the government he proclaimed publicly, "what has al- 
ready been promised shall be performed, what has not been 
promised will be withheld." There was little hope for a free 
Prussia in those words ! 

By 1860 it was clear enough that there were two things the 
great majority of Germans wanted: I. The union of all the 
land in a single effective federal empire, so that the Germanic 
folk might become a true nation: not a loose "bund" of con- 
tending states, always bullied by Austria and sometimes 
kicked by France. II. The establishment of a liberal political 
system both in the new central government and the several 
federated states. However much the majority of the junker 
Prussian aristocracy (champions of extreme monarchism) and 
even the royal house of Prussia itself, were in favor of the 
first proposition, they were utterly out of sympathy with the 
second. A kind of working hypothesis seems therefore to 
have possessed the Prussian aristocracy and the whole Hohen- 
zollern governmental machine in the years which followed. 
They must secure unity for the German nation : — this would 
be for their own glory, because they intended to dominate the 
new Empire. By thus giving the people half of what they 
were craving: by giving them to boot a government which 
should flatter national pride by great victories, should in- 
crease the national wealth, raise the standard of living, fulfil 
in fact almost every material ideal except that of political 
liberty, — the German people could be satisfied. They would 
drop their demand for free constitutions because the Hohen- 
zollerns and their Prussian army nobles were giving them 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 173 

better things than a liberal regime could give. Autocracy in 
other words must survive — because it w**s so very efficient. 

No "junker" statesman ever avowed this precise pro- 
gram, but Bismarck and his lieutenants certainly lived up 
to the spirit of it most consistently. Thanks to the execution 
of the policy, in 1914, William II had a much firmer grip on 
the government than his grand-father possessed in 1858 : and 
this fact caused much history to be written. 

In 1861 William I and his advisers, to assure themselves 
that if Germany were consolidated it should be under Prus- 
sian and not Austrian leadership, began a radical strengthen- 
ing of their army. The Prussian Chamber of Deputies, dis- 
liking the autocratic tendencies of the government, refused 
to vote the needful money. The king, however, refused to 
drop his military projects. He appointed as prime minister 
an approved and devoted champion of the rights of absolute 
monarchy — Otto von Bismarck, a genuine Prussian junker. 
Popular wrath was rising. The king was afraid for his throne 
and even for his head: but Bismarck offered to hold office 
despite hostile votes in parliament, and to collect taxes with- 
out authority of law (1862). So long as the army did not 
actually mutiny he was willing to snap his fingers at resolu- 
tions of censure. It was at this time that Bismarck bluntly 
asserted, ' ' It is not Prussia 's liberalism which Germany looks 
to but her military power": and again his famous dictum, 
"The unity of Germany is not to be brought about by speeches, 
nor by votes of majorities, but by blood and iron." And he 
held on his way. Protests by the parliament were not even 
received by the king. Liberal newspapers were censored or 
suppressed. Municipal councils presented petitions to the 
sovereign : they were fined for their action. Public meetings 
were broken up. Feeling against the king and his despotic 
minister ran high, but Bismarck continued unfaltering, while 
his master, though often with fears, tenaciously supported 
him. 

It seems strange indeed, but from 1862 to 1866 the ruler 
who was later acclaimed as Kaiser Wilhelm "der Grosse," 



17-1 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and his minister who became the national hero of Germany, 
were intensely unpopular among their own subjects. All the 
best intelligence of Prussia, — journalists, university pro- 
fessors, great capitalists, etc., seemed to be execrating them. 
Even Frederick, the Crown Prince (later Emperor Frederick 
III, and father of William II) bitterly denounced Bismarck 
for endangering the dynasty by his excessively arbitrary 
methods. But there was one element that stood stoutly by — 
the junker lords ; they supplied the army officers and kept the 
troops loyal to the autocratic regime. Once more Hohenzol- 
lernism and junkerdom displayed their indissoluble alliance — ■ 
and all the time Von Moltke and Von Roon, a great general 
and a great war minister respectively, continued their re- 
forms and the enlargement of the army, until it was ready to 
astonish the world. 

In 186-1 Bismarck struck his first blow. He inveigled Aus- 
tria into making an alliance with Prussia and expelled the 
Danes from Schleswig-Holstein, alleging that King Frederick 
VIII of Denmark was trying to "Danize" a nominally Ger- 
man land. 1 In 1866 he was ready for his greater blow. Ger- 
many could never be united under the leadership of Prussia 
until Austria had suffered complete military overthrow. Bis- 
marck's government was extremely unpopular in South Ger- 
many. Even in his own Prussia the liberals had little en- 
thusiasm when he sounded the call to arms. He heeded this 
not. The new army was loyal, fit, and ready. On the 14th 
of June, 1866, Prussia broke with Austria and with nearly 
all the lesser German states. She had, however, Italy for 
an ally. On July 2nd, Moltke's new military machine blasted 
the power of Austria completely at the battle of Sadowa. 
''Your Majesty," reported the victorious general to his king, 
"you have won not merely the battle but the campaign." On 
the 23rd of July Austria was so humbled that she asked for an 
armistice to save herself from seeing the Prussian army in 
Vienna, and a treaty of peace soon followed. Austria was to 
quit Germany altogether. She was to leave the South Ger- 
man states (Hesse-Darmstadt, Baden, Wiirtemberg and Ba- 

f For the later Schleswig-Holstein problem, see p. 228. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 175 

varia) independent, and to let Prussia organize the rest of 
Germany into the "North German Confederation." 

The new German Empire was almost made by this victory 
of 1866. Prussia hastened to round out her dominions by 
absorbing several of the smaller northern states which had 
failed to bolster up her policies. Schleswig-Holstein she now 
annexed outright, likewise the free city of Frankfort, the 
principalities of Hesse-Cassel and Nassau and especially the 
kingdom of Hanover. The wishes of the communities were 
in no wise consulted. Prussia completed her deed through 
mere arbitrary might. 1 Bismarck then, with great haste, 
organized his new "North German Confederation." At the 
time it embraced about 70 per cent, of all the population of 
Germany. The South Germans were still hesitant and dis- 
trustful. He could not bring them in, but he deliberately 
arranged that the constitution of the Confederation should be 
capable, with a few modifications, of being expanded to em- 
brace these southern states also. This constitution of 1866 
was therefore in essential points the constitution of the actual 
German Empire (see p. 182). 

But Bismarck had achieved more than the humiliation of 
Austria by Moltke's victory. Austria had been defeated and 
so had the Prussian liberals. They had watched him begin 
the war with intense misgiving, but now the glory of the vic- 
tory, the enthusiasm over the partial unification of the Fa- 
therland, swept them off their feet. After all — had not ' ' blood 
and iron ' ' been the means to success ? They could protest no 
longer. Many of Bismarck's old foes became his admirers. 
The army was immensely popular. It was impossible to 
brand as despots and usurpers the ministers who had won 
such an amazing success. Political theories must go down ! 

In the 1866 elections in Prussia the liberals lost seats right 
and left, and nearly all the gain was by the "Conservatives," 

i Of course this was the annexation of German communities to people 
of their own kin — not like that of the Danes, Poles and Alsatians. 
Nevertheless, the expulsion of the old kings was resented long and bit- 
terly in Hanover. In Hesse-Cassel, where the prince had been tyranni- 
cal and unpopular, the change was accepted more readily. 



176 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the deputies for the extreme monarchists and junkers. Bis- 
marck then boldly went before the Prussian parliament and 
asked for a bill of indemnity for having collected taxes with- 
out authority. It was voted 230 to 75, many of the liberals 
concurring. By this act the Prussian liberals cut their own 
throats. They said in substance that a minister was some- 
times quite justified in defying law and constitutional rights 
if only he thought his own ends were good. The old Prussian 
Liberal party, deprived of a common principle for which to 
battle, speedily went to pieces. There were still some pro- 
testing radicals, but a great number proclaimed themselves 
"National Liberals/' declaring that they would "sustain the 
government fully in its foreign policy " though "maintaining 
in home matters the position of a watchful and loyal opposi- 
tion." From such an "opposition" Bismarck had nothing 
to fear. 

In 1849 German liberalism had sustained its first terrible 
defeat, — despite an excellent opportunity, it had failed to 
unify the nation. In 1866 it had met its second overthrow 
— it had seen the nation almost unified, not by its efforts but 
despite them ; and it had been forced to condone the utter de- 
fiance of its principles. After Sadowa the Hohenzollerns and 
the junkers had no reason to tremble for their power. They 
were giving to German people half of what it wanted, and felt 
safe in withholding the other half. 

In 1870 (p. 1) Bismarck completed the work by pre- 
cipitating the war with France. He believed that the com- 
mon victory would sweep the South German states into the 
new federation, 1 and give to this young creation of his all 
the strength and enthusiasm for the future which might come 
with a great success. In this he was entirely right. 

After Sedan there had been many negotiations between 
Prussia and the South German states. The latter had feared 
decidedly their great northern neighbor and her masterful 
ways. Their people were more democratic than the Prus- 
sians, and some of their princes were not anxious to be over- 

i The South German states were already in military alliance with 
Prussia and gave her effective help from the beginning of the war with 
France. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 177 

shadowed by their ''brother" at Berlin. But the Grand 
Duke of Baden was strongly pro-Prussian, and at last King 
Louis of Bavaria (the most prominent ruler in the southern 
group) outwardly took the initiative. 

This king was an eccentric man who spent his days in feuds 
with his ministers and family, largely because of his insist- 
ence upon squandering every groschen of his income on ex- 
travagant and useless palaces. He was ultimately to be 
declared insane and to perish (1886) by drowning himself in 
the Starnberger Lake near his castle of Berg. In 1871 he 
was reputed to have hated Bismarck and the Prussians cor- 
dially, but circumstances were too much for him. He was 
finally induced to send to the other South German princes 
a letter suggesting union under Prussia, a letter which had 
undoubtedly been drafted by Bismarck himself. Rumor as- 
serts on grounds not lightly to be dismissed that the opposi- 
tion of King Louis was not withdrawn until the Bavarian court 
favorite, Count Holstein, came to Versailles, and left it not 
merely with Bismarck's letter, but also with a considerable 
sum of money for his royal master and himself. 1 Certain it 
is that the great chancellor was never squeamish as to his 
methods when it was a question of persuading non-Prussian 
statesmen to accept his views. Here again he set an example 
for less adroit successors to his power, suggesting certain 
strange ways utilized for influencing the government of the 
United States and other neutral organs of authority during 
the years 1914-17. 

Bismarck had had the practical wisdom, when he induced 
the Southern states to come in, to grant special privileges 
within the new Empire to Bavaria, and, to a less extent, Wiir- 
temberg. Bavaria was to keep the control of her army in 
peace-time, of her post and telegraphs, and much of her taxa- 
tion. Nevertheless, in any case, the practical effect of the 

ij. H. Rose, "The Development of European Nations," I, p. 155-6. 
This very responsible English historian wrote his statement in 1905, 
long before his own country and Germany were at war, or even dan- 
gerously unfriendly. Mr. Rose heartily admired many things about 
Bismarck's policy. 



178 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Bismarckian regime was to tie the remainder of Germany 
firmly and effectually to Prussia. The south German states 
wore still to preserve local autonomy: they were still to hold 
at arm's length the immediate pressure of junkerdom: they 
were to enjoy state constitutions and popular rights which 
were (compared with Prussia) "liberal," but notwithstand- 
ing all tli is they were to contribute their economic and mili- 
tary strength to the glorification of the house of Hohenzollern, 
and to the advancement presently of the schemes of the Pan- 
Germans who (under the Hohenzollern aegis) were to bring 
about a world war in their efforts to dominate the planet. 
Therefore Bismarck could afford to be conciliatory. The 
"New Empire" of 1871 really meant the complete subordi- 
nation of the remainder of Germany to the iron hand of 
Prussia. It was wise to case that hand in a velvet glove. 

An ex-chancellor of Germany in 1913 commended Bismarck 
because when securing imperial unity "with incomparable 
audacity and constructive statesmanship ... he left out of 
play the political capacities of the Germans, in which they had 
never excelled, while he called into action their fighting pow- 
ers which have always been their strongest point." 1 In 
other words, it was to be arranged that all the Germans should 
be rendered available to fight the new Kaiser's battles, but 
they were not to have any large extension of political rights. 
For this end the constitution of the four-year-old North Ger- 
man Confederation was easily expanded a little, and its head 
given a prouder title. Sedan was merely completing the work 
of Sadowa. 

From 1871 down to +he outbreak of the Great War Ger- 
many was governed essentially upon the following 1 system. 
The King of Prussia became ipso facto "German Emperor." 2 
Since the offices of King and Emperor were inseparable and 
Prussia was an hereditary monarchy, the "Kaisership" was 
also hereditary. The Emperor could declare offensive war 

i Von Biilow, "Imperial Germany," p. 12. 

2 Bismarck shunned the title of "Emperor of Germany" to avoid im- 
plying that the Prussian king exercised direct sovereign power over 
Bavaria and the other "touchy" lesser states. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 179 

only after consulting the "Federal Council," but defensive 
war he could declare on his own personal fiat. Since no mod- 
ern government has ever admitted that any war it has had 
to wage was other than "defensive," the Emperor thus really 
held the supreme issues in his own hands. He controlled 
foreign affairs, and the army and navy. Under him was one 
arch-minister, the chancellor — his factotum and representative 
in everything, and holding office at the sole will of his im- 
perial master, to whom he was "responsible" for the govern- 
ment of the Empire. There were lesser ministers of state, but 
they were really only the chancellor's high clerks and handy 
assistants. They were responsible to the chancellor only and 
not to any parliamentary body. 

Under the Emperor was the form of a free legislature. 
The lower house of this parliament, the Reichstag, consisted 
of 397 members elected by pretty complete manhood suffrage. 
Bismarck was no lover of parliaments, but he understood the 
need of affecting to conciliate the liberal elements in his hour 
of triumph; he also understood the great value of a large 
"talking" body — to voice public opinion and to let off ex- 
plosive ideas in a harmless manner: — in short of an imperial 
safety valve. He took ample precautions that the powers of 
the Reichstag should be so limited that it was not a great deal 
better than a pretentious official debating club, although in 
theory it had the right to amend the budget and originate 
laws. 

The real governing body (and in truth Bismarck's master- 
piece) was not the Reichstag, but the "Federal Council" 
(Bundesrat) . Its functions were often executive and judicial 
as well as merely legislative. Its meetings were private. It 
initiated nearly all the legislation presented to the Reichstag, 
and its consent was needful to validate any bill the Reichstag 
might have managed to pass. The Bundesrat was, in short, 
the mainspring of the whole Bismarckian regime. It was not 
responsible to the people, nor elected by the people, but was 
a council of 61 members 1 representing very strictly the princes 

i Originally only 58, but three were added for Alsace-Lorraine in 1911. 
These, however, practically were controlled by Prussia. 



180 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of Germany. Prussia had 17 of these votes, Bavaria six, 
some of the lesser states two, three or four, and fourteen of 
the lesser "sovereigns," like the starving little prince of 
Schaumberg-Lippe, had only one apiece, as did the three 
"free cities" (Hamburg, Bremen and Liibeck). 

These 61 "Excellencies" in the Bundesrat were mere dum- 
mies, or perhaps it were more respectful to say instructed 
ambassadors for their royal, ducal, or princely masters, ap- 
pointed and removed at the respective august pleasures of said 
masters. They were obliged to vote the way their rulers 
ordered, no matter what arguments might come up in debate. 
Since Prussia now supplied over 60 per cent, of both the area 
and the population of the Empire it seemed a gracious conces- 
sion for her King to be content with only seventeen votes — 
fourteen less than a majority. 1 But the fact was that the 
Prussian government with its great influence could almost in- 
variably win over by means of very small favors enough of 
the lesser princes to command a sure majority. With a little 
tact in the Bundesrat, Prussia could always have her way; 
and thus by means of this monarchic, non-parliamentary, se- 
cret, and utterly un-democratic Federal Council the King of 
Prussia could place an absolute veto on all legislation, could 
hem in the Reichstag, and, since the Bundesrat had large 
duties of administration and acted often as a court of high 
appeal, affect a great part of the official machinery through- 
out the land. The Bundesrat was content to exclude the 
public from its debates and leave the noisy Reichstag in the 
lime-light. None the less it was the mainspring of the whole 
Bismarckian regime. 

The Reichstag undoubtedly served its prime end as "a 
debating club and a debating club that had no power of see- 
ing its will carried out." It was indeed required to pass on 
appropriations, and upon new taxes and forms of proposed 
legislation. Usually for the sake of peace the chancellor 

i Also it requires only 14 votes to defeat any change in the Federal 
Constitution, while changes in the army and navy laws and in the most 
important tax laws are specifically made subject to the absolute veto 
of the Kaiser. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 181 

would refrain from forcing upon it very unwelcome fiscal 
proposals, and would allow minor amendments. But on great 
serious issues the government did not hesitate to defy the 
Reichstag, and by implied threats and official pressure compel 
it to eat its words; and by dissolving it and seeking a new 
election, it could always get a more subservient body. The 
Reischtag knew that it was in the last analysis powerless. 
Therefore, its members, being irresponsible and reckless — 
split also into many groups and factions, — gave vent to crude 
speeches, and generally acted as men will who are told to 
criticize but not to act : — all of which confirmed the monarch- 
ists in the opinion that ' ' Germans are not a political people. ' ' 

Bismarck and all his successors repeatedly told the Reichstag the 
chancellors were responsible to the Kaiser, not to it. Bismarck de- 
clared that the Reichstag could not even stop the payment of his salary, 
— if it refused the vote he would merely go to law and collect it. Beth- 
mann-Hollweg in a famous speech said bluntly, "Gentlemen, I do not 
serve parliament"; and another time, referring to the ministerial re- 
sponsibility existing in France, "I know full well that there are those 
who are striving to establish similar institutions here. I shall oppose 
them with all my force." 

Later a very serious new grievance arose. Originally the districts for 
members of the Reichstag had been distributed on the basis of one for 
about every 100,000 inhabitants. As time advanced, and especially as 
certain great cities grew and as rural districts declined, the districts 
became exceedingly unequal. The government refused to allow a new 
distribution, — it feared the increased votes that would come to the 
Socialists in the Reichstag, thanks to the remarkable increase of the 
city populations. The result was that about 1014 in conservative East 
Prussia the average deputy represented about 24,000 voters. In Social- 
istic Berlin he represented about 125,000 voters. Every attempt to 
remedy this glaring injustice was abruptly defeated. 

In January, 1914, just on the eve of Armageddon, Fried- 
rich Naumann, an intelligent and moderate liberal in the 
Reichstag, uttered these bitter words, "The man who com- 
pared this house to a hall of echoes was not far wrong. . . . 
"When one asks the question, 'What part has the Reichstag 
in German history as a whole?' it will be seen that the part 
is a very limited one. ' ' 



182 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The Hohenzollerns and their devoted servants, therefore, 
between the powers of the imperial office direct and the grip 
Prussia had upon the Bundesrat, controlled the whole im- 
perial government. 

But of course under the Bismarckian system a very large 
part of the business of government was reserved for the differ- 
ent states: J and the welfare of all the 40,0000,000-odd Prus- 
sians in 1914 was quite as much affected by the doings of 
their Landtag as by the deliberations of the more pretentious 
imperial parliament. 

If the Hohenzollern ministers had a firm grip on the cen- 
tral government, upon the affairs of Prussia they had a 
stranglehold. Prussia was governed, down to the Great War, 
by the sham constitution awarded by Frederick William IV 
in 1850, and every attempt to modify it essentially had failed. 
In fact, although the royal ministers themselves, rendered 
anxious by the popular clamor, had sometimes suggested lib- 
eralizing amendments, the noble "junkers'' who controlled 
the majority in both houses had headed off every effort to 
weaken the old regime which served the aristocracy so well. 

This constitution had been "granted" by the King, as 
if out of his loving favor. There was nothing to indicate that 
he might not withdraw or alter it at will. Popular sover- 
eignty was nowhere admitted. The king gave, the king might 
take away; blessed be the name of the king! Statesmen and 
jurists were agreed that such might be the case. 

The king of course had an absolute veto upon all laws. 
He named the Prussian ministers and dismissed them at his i 
good pleasure. In the words of a famous legal commentator, 
"Everything which is decided or carried out in the state takes 
place in the name of the King. He is the personified power 
of the state." (Schulze.) In short he could perform almost 

i Roughly speaking the division of powers between the German states 
and the central government is somewhat the same as in the United 
States, although the imperial government can legislate on a wider 
range of matters than the American Congress. On the other hand, 
many more of the Federal laws are entrusted to enforcement by the local 
authorities than with us. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 183 

any conceivable act except where, by the constitution, he had 
tentatively agreed not to do it. 1 

The upper house of parliament {Herrenhaus — " House of 
Lords") was composed of princes, some very high nobles, 
and a large number of lesser nobles and magnates all ap- 
pointed for life by the King. Needless to say, no man un- 
welcome to the royal government had this honor thrust upon 
him. If ever this body had ventured to defy the King, he 
could promptly swamp the hostile majority by creating new 
" lords.' ' But such an amazing accident never happened, 
and the Herrenhaus was of course always the ardent cham- 
pion of "the altar and the throne" — of the church and the 
government, each in its most conservative form. 

However, there was a lower house (Abgeordnetenhaus 
— "House of Representatives") which gave a semblance 
of popular representation. No better system of confirming 
privileges, under a few of the forms of democracy, was ever 
presented than by this creation of the degenerating brain of 
Frederick William IV. The districts were, in the first place, 
allotted on a basis not really revised since 1860, with a few 
changes in 1906. Up to that time the great city of Berlin 
had returned only nine members, then it was graciously al- 
lowed to have twelve out of the total of 443. 

i The terms which Prussian court etiquette and usage insisted should 
be used in addressing the Emperor-King indicate sufficiently the 
position he occupied in the minds of his loyal subjects. Non-Teutonic 
persons might have imagined them borrowed from the annals of Senna- 
cherib, Xerxes, Harun-al-Raschid or other departed Oriental despots. 

Thus, e.g., Von Arnim (a very distinguished Prussian nobleman) ad- 
dressing a petition to William I, appealed to the "Most illustrious, 
very powerful Emperor and King, Gracious Emperor, King and Sover- 
eign." Prince Henry of Prussia publicly addresses his brother William 
II "most august Emperor, most high and mighty King and Lord, illus- 
trious brother," and then proceeds to thank him for his favor "out of 
his faithful, fraternal and most obedient heart." 

A standing official term for the Emperor -King was "the All-Highest." 
In loyal circles frequently it was not proper to refer to the Emperor's 
actions directly: many things were spoken of as ordered or initiated 
"from Above." This did not imply an act of Divine Providence but of 
William I or II of Hohenzollern. 



184 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Furthermore, the system of voting was deliberately calcu- 
lated to keep the masses of the people just as completely out 
of power as possible. The deputies were not chosen directly, 
but by means of "sub-district electors" who were themselves 
elected by the people, and next all the electors from the sub- 
districts, meeting in a common body to represent the larger 
"district," proceeded to choose the local worthy to go to the 
Landtag. This process of course gave the government a 
chance to bring much personal pressure on the very con- 
trollable groups of electors. But "pressure" was not very 
often needed. The original voters in every sub-district were 
carefully grouped into three classes — each choosing one-third 
of its "electors." This three-class system was the keystone 
of the Prussian edifice. In the first class were put the largest 
tax contributors, who paid one-third of the tax-quotas of the 
districts, in the second class the tax payers who contributed 
the second third of the taxes, in the third group all the rest 
of the "Kaiser und Konig's" loving subjects. The "electors" 
from these three groups were on terms of absolute equality in 
numbers and influence when they met to choose the district 
representative, and a bare majority of their electoral ballots 
always prevailed. Considering the extreme inequality in the 
distribution of wealth in Prussia the main result was pre- 
determined from the first. 

Shortly before 1914 there were 2,214 "sub-electoral-dis- 
tricts" in Prussia where one-third of the taxes were paid 
by a single man, who therefore cast the entire vote for the 
first-class electors in his entire precinct. There were 1,703 
precincts where there were only two first-class voters, "high- 
born" gentlemen, usually in happy harmony. The voting 
was open. Every citizen had to announce his favorite candi- 
date. If a peasant or workman voted for a radical con- 
demned as "dangerous" by his landlord or employer the 
poor man had to take the possible consequences. Under those 
circumstances it is amazing that any considerable radical vote 
was polled at all. It profited little if a third-class voter took 
his economic life in his hands, however, and voted "for the 
Left" (i.e., against the Government). In 1907 this remark^ 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 185 

able system saw about 3% of the electorate belonging to the 
first class, 9.5% to the second, 87.5% to the third — and all 
three of precisely the same influence! It was a cold strange 
day when the lordly " first-classer " could not find enough 
pliable or socially aspiring "second-classers" to join with 
him and give him the majority. In 1903 it was said that a 
total of only 324,000 votes actually elected 143 conservative 
representatives, while 314,000 Social Democrat votes did not 
yield the party a single member. In 1908 by a great effort 
the Social Democrats did elect seven members out of the 443. 
They had to cast about 24% of the total number of votes to 
accomplish this. Considering the fruits of this system and 
the method of balloting * there was grim humor in Bethmann- 
Hollweg's remarks in 1910, when he said, "We are opposed 
to secret balloting because ... it favors the terrorism which 
Socialists exercise over the burgher-class voters ! ' ' 

As a matter of fact, under this system many men felt it 
was useless to go to the polls. In 1903 only 23.6% of the 
total number of Prussian voters cast ballots in their Landtag 
election : but in that same year when there was a more gen- 
uine contest for the Reichstag about 75 % voted: — a sufficient 
comment on the Prussian system. 

This arrangement, of course, for two generations had awak- 
ened the wrath of a great part of Germany. Even Bismarck 
had damned it as "the most miserable and absurd election 
law that had ever been formulated in any country." The 
iron chancellor had been indeed no lover of popular liberty, 
but he had a keen sense of absurdities and understood how 
unwelcome agitators could be controlled by subtler methods. 
Every attempt, however, to remedy this system failed. The 
Prussian ministry, responsible for the contentment of the 

i It is easy to heap up statistics which illustrate the gross injustice 
of this system of balloting. In 1908 there were in all Prussia 293,000, 
1st class voters, 1,065,240, 2nd class and 6,324,000, 3rd class. In the 
rich city of Koln there were 370 1st class, 2,584 2nd class and 22,324, 
3rd class. In Saarbrucken, Baron von Sturm, the only 1st class voter, 
blandly announced "that he did not suffer from isolation. " In one of 
the iniquitously large Berlin districts, a worthy Herr Hefte, a manu- 
facturer of sausages, covered the entire first-class vote with his own hat. 



186 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

land and anxious to conciliate liberal opinion in South Ger- 
many, were not averse to certain concessions. Indeed some- 
times they found the thick-headed opposition of the Conserva- 
tives to all kinds of reforms a great hindrance to the chief 
glory of the Hohenzollern regime — systematized efficiency. 
They had, however, created an engine they could not control. 
Several times, notably in 1910, there were great public demon- 
strations in Berlin and elsewhere, and even gatherings ap- 
proaching riots to indicate popular wrath at the "three 
classes." The government repeatedly introduced measures 
calculated at least to throw a sop to the Cerberus of general 
discontent: but the Conservatives in the House of Represen- 
tatives, aided sometimes by their allies in the House of Peers, 
voted down even the most innocent reforms. Prussia was still 
under the three-class system when the final earthquake shook 
Europe. 

So in all the numerous matters reserved to the German 
states, the 40,000,000 people of Prussia were subject to a 
regime where a king, autocratic in practically every matter of 
administration, shared his legislative power with a parliament 
controlled b}^ the worst kind of an aristocracy — an aristocracy 
based on wealth rather than merit. In most of the rest of 
Germany somewhat more liberal conditions prevailed. In 
Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Baden there was equal male suf- 
frage; in Saxony there was the secret ballot and five classes 
of voters, although here some of the extra privileges went to 
men of superior education or professional ability, and also 
to men aged over fifty. The great free-city of Hamburg had 
a House of Burgesses in choosing which the wealthy and 
highly placed had special privileges ; while the wretched little 
principality of Lippe imitated mighty Prussia with a three- 
class system. 

Government in the smaller principalities was of course often paternal 
and very personal, irrespective of the forms of the local constitution. 
In the Mecklenburgs there was no constitution at all, — only a survival 
of a mediaeval system of privileged "estates." 

The ruler of a small principality was not likely to be a grim war- 
lord, but an urbane, kindly gentleman, who walked out in the park of 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 187 

his little "residence-city," bowed politely to the courtesying women he 
met, and stopped to pat the heads of their smiling children. If he of- 
fended public sentiment he did not have to wait for a protest from his 
parliament to teach him his error. Some years ago His Grand Ducal 
Highness of Saxe- Weimar-Eisenach, having become a widower, visited 
at Eisenach the grave of his late wife, on the anniversary of her death. 
He went to the grave in an automobile (then rather uncommon in Ger- 
many) and not in a horse-drawn carriage. This unconventionality and 
insult to the departed shook the principality, and produced spontaneously 
"such respectful but emphatic protests 1 " from all ages, classes and 
sexes of his subjects that His Highness promised not to offend against 
the proprieties again. — All of which goes to illustrate that the spirit of 
Prussia is not always the true spirit of the whole of Germany ! 

However, the hand of Prussian junkers affected even the 
liberal South Germans in a sinister way. Besides the fact 
that his own Prussian aristocrats were likely to have more 
influence on the Emperor than Bavarians or Badeners, the 
imperial chancellor was also minister-president — head of the 
state cabinet — of Prussia. He must govern the empire and 
the great kingdom simultaneously. In the Empire he might 
indeed control the Bundesrat through the great influence of 
the Prussian crown; he could divide the factions of the 
Reichstag and defy them; but in Prussia he had to reckon 
with the solid and perpetual conservative majority in both 
houses of parliament. The Conservatives exercised the pre- 
rogatives of loyal friends of the crown ; — they were more royal 
than the Emperor-King. As a mocking epigram said, "They 
wished for an absolute Kaiser, if he would do only the things 
they wanted." They knew perfectly well that the govern- 
ment could not defy them — otherwise it would be driven into 
the arms of the hated liberals. The junkers provided the 
heads of the great civil bureaucracy, the diplomatic service, 
and above all nearly the whole officers' corps in the army. In 
the last analysis they had the Hohenzollerns at their mercy. 
Therefore an imperial chancellor always faced this peril ; if he 
advocated any quasi-liberal measures in the imperial govern- 
ment the Conservatives were furious. They did not have a 
majority in the Reichstag nor in the Bundesrat; 1 but they 

i The votes of Prussia in the Bundesrat would be of course cast the 
way the King of Prussia personally directed. 



188 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

could trade out their spleen in retaliation by making life mis- 
erable for the minister-president (alias chancellor) in both 
houses of the Prussian parliament which they absolutely con- 
trolled. A Hohenzollern chief minister therefore was obliged 
to walk a conservative path in the Reichstag, lest he come 
utterly to grief in the decidedly important Landtag. Thus 
the three-class system really placed the grip of the wealthy 
and "well-born" upon the entire nation. 

This undemocratic Prussian government between 1871 and 
1914 was to exhibit almost uncanny efficiency — else it could 
never have strengthened its grasp upon the Empire and 
reached out a giant hand for the mastery of the world. Un- 
der the system of districting, the majority of the Prussian 
Landtag was elected from the level agricultural lands east 
of the Elbe, and there converging on Poland lay the strong- 
holds of the mighty Junkers and the original seats of their 
old masters the Hohenzollerns. The junkers (i.e., "young 
lords" — squires) had the virtues of a country aristocracy — 
they were brave, hard-hitting, with a keen sense of personal 
honor, an extreme devotion to duty as they saw it, and an in- 
tense loyalty to their king. They were (as a class) honorably 
exempt from the more sordid forms of the pursuit of money. 
They were devout Lutherans after a very conservative type 
of theology. They had also an intense caste pride, despising 
alike the professional classes, the merchants of the towns and 
the artisans of the factories no less than the tow-heaclecl peas- 
ants who were still (despite the laws formally conferring 
personal "freedom") not very much better than serfs upon 
the great estates. 

A typical junker was the owner of a great landed property 
with a picturesque and uncomfortable ancient schloss for his 
residence, dominating a village or two where peasant children 
scrambled with the pigs and the chickens in the great dung- 
heaps before the doors of the houses. He might indeed come 
to enjoy city life, the excitements of a visit to Berlin and such 
modern luxuries as his means would afford. He might im- 
prove his agricultural methods and be glad to invest his sur- 
plus income in factories (genteelly conducted indirectly, 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 189 

through a manager) or to dabble in foreign investments. 
None the less he remained heart and soul a country aristocrat, 
with all the prejudices of a squierarehy ; — accustomed to curse 
his inferiors, to cane his servants, to despise all who lived by 
1 ' trade ' ' and to bend only to the King. 

The eldest son of such a "junker" would of course ordi 
narily be the heir to the schloss; but the rights of primogeni 
ture were not as strict in Prussia as in England, and all the 
sons of a nobleman wore the "von" (the prefix of nobility) 
or the countly or baronial title. Only by exception would 
they look forward to any kind of productive career other 
than the always gentlemanly task of the remote over-sight of 
farm-labor. Some would enter the Emperor-King's civil 
service, some would be his diplomats, but the career par ex- 
cellence for a Prussian squire was the army. To enter a 
military school, to struggle through the "glittering misery" 
of the rank of sub-lieutenant, by hard and faithful work to 
win approval and rise to the higher grades of the army; to 
reinforce one's income by marriage with the daughter of a 
wealthy "merchant," whose mit-gift (dowry) would offset 
her lack of pedigree, and to end up as an "Excellenz" — the 
lieutenant-general of an army corps, that was the career 
through which many young Prussians, "poor but noble," 
elected to struggle. The army and the landed aristocracy 
never lost touch; and they were both absolutely essential to 
the crown. They literally made the Hohenzollern regime 
possible, and the "All-highest" was never allowed to forget 
the fact. 

The pay of Prussian junior rank officers was pitifully small. A 
second lieutenant was paid about $367 annually against $1,700 in the 
United States army. How to "live like a man of honor" upon that 
sum has been a problem to very many young officers whose families 
could not give them a large allowance. But the practice of giving the 
social preeminence to the military, made it often easy for an officer to 
marry the daughter of some rich burgher who would feel flattered to 
have a member of the ruling class for his son-in-law. Before a young 
officer married, he had to submit the qualifications of the bride to the 
scrutiny of a committee of his senior officers to see whether the young 
lady were acceptable personally in military circles, and also whether 
her dowry or allowance would make her husband able to maintain a 



190 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

proper establishment. Once married the wife of a sub-lieutenant would 
have the social entree ahead of her mother, who might be the wife of 
a wealthy captain of industry or banker, a world-renowned university 
professor, or a scientist credited with epoch-making discoveries. 

This payment by means of social honor instead of by salaries was of 
course part of the efficient Prussian system of getting the greatest pos- 
sible results for the minimum public expenditure. It helped to enable 
the Hohenzollerns to keep up a huge army on a relatively small mili- 
tary budget. 

The Prussian aristocracy therefore had many virtues and 
many marked limitations. Its members desired to see Ger- 
many powerful, expanding and (in a material way) progres- 
sive. They were not opposed to exploiting all the fruits of 
modern natural science. Like the eighteenth century enlight- 
ened despots they were abounding in good will towards the 
less favored population committed to their charge. They took 
their duties very seriously, and they w T ere never idle or venal. 
They were also able to inspire the great mass of their subordi- 
nates — drill sergeants, police officers, tax-collectors, public 
inspectors, etc. — with a profound sense of loyalty and zeal for 
executing their system. 

The German people, naturally law-abiding and cheerful un- 
der reasonable authority, were not irked by such rulers (the 
masses indeed having alwaj's been without considerable 
"rights") except where the arm of the government became 
especially heavy. It has been alleged that the Prussian aris- 
tocracy, arising in the extreme east of Germany, was really 
more Polish and Wendish than Teutonic in its ancestry; but 
its whole spirit fell in well indeed with the German tendency 
to analyze, systematize and regulate all things down to the 
minutest detail. The Prussian regime being essentially mili- 
tary, the military spirit was carried out into the civilian popu- 
lation by a system of minute police commands and prohibitions 
such as was unknown in any other clime or age. 1 The cult 
of the infallibility of the government became a prime element 

i The obedience of the civilian population was of course expedited by 
the fact that the greater part of the German youth passed years of their 
life under a compulsory military system, where they were subjected to a 



THE NEAV GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS 19] 

in secular education and religion. The elaborate school sys 
tern was carefully adjusted to make every lesson in history 
a lesson in loyalty to the house of Hohenzollern ; and, a£ 
has been seen, the Lutheran church was a bulwark of th( 
throne. 

The zealous government, through its hierarchy of officials 
provided for the regulation of its subjects from the cradh 
to the grave. The park benches of a Prussian city were care 
fully labeled with the classes and sexes of the public entitlec 
to sit on each bench. The hours for piano playing were sub 
ject to police control: also the number of pedestrians tha - 
might walk abreast on the city streets. The size of the beer 
mug, the sidewalks permissible for an infant's perambulator 
the location of flower pots on a window sill, these are randon 
matters which a paternal government regulated for its people 
Most of the regulations were indeed theoretically wise, bu 
the Prussian genius never grasped the fact that nine-tenthi 
of them were superfluous and tended to make their victim! 
automata rather than responsible men. 1 

Had this absolutely inquisitorial and military regime beer 
senseless and inefficient it would have spelled its own ruin 
On the contrary, it was directed by men who were within then 
limitations intelligent, patriotic, self-sacrificing and if any 
thing far too logical. Autocracy and privilege, on the de 
fensive everywhere else in the world, half-consciously wer< 
trying in Prussianized Germany to show how much greate] 
happiness and success they could bring to their nation thar 
the easy-going, blundering, semi-efficient and sometimes evei 
corrupt and non-progressive liberalism of England, France 
America and other lands. The alliance between the Hohen 
zollern dynasty and the military aristocracy was absolute 
The military caste hated the thought that the monarch shoulc 
choose his ministers at the behest of a popularly made parlia 

decidedly more severe discipline and taught a far more abject subserv 
ience to their officers than in any other West European army. It wa 
quite easy to transfer their habits of implicit military obedience t< 
eivil life. 

1 See note at end of chapter. 



92 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

nent. This was not from any fine-spun political theory, but 
>eeause the Hohenzollerns could not have two masters, the 
officers and the people. "The dearest wish of every Prus- 
;iaiv' said Bethmann-Hollweg, in January, 1914, "is to see 
he King's army completely under the control of the King, 
md not becoming the army of the parliament." A little 
;arlier a typical junker, Herr von Oldenburg, had stated this 
dew of the case even more bluntly on the floor of the Imperial 
Diet itself. ''The Kaiser should be in a position to say at 
my moment to a lieutenant: Take ten men and shut up the 
teichstag /' ' 

After 1871 this spirit of Prussian junkerdom was to enter 
nto closer alliance with the monarchy than ever before and to 
lold back the rising wave of liberalism by giving the German 
lation almost everything a proud people could desire save 
>nly political liberty. The German folk were to enjoy the 
uemories of a victorious past, the satisfaction of a prosperous 
>resent, and before them was to be dangled the hope of a 
ret more golden future. Thereby all but a minority were to 
)e drugged. It was even as Harden, the noted journalist, 
laid: "In order to he strong, Germany has rejected the great 
nodern comfort of democracy. ,: ' * 

So long as this alliance of modern material progress and 
nedieval political privilege was to affect only Germany, the 
•est of mankind could simply look on in bewilderment: at 
ength came the time when it was to affect the whole world. 1 

AN EXAMPLE OF PRUSSIAN THOROUGHNESS 

The following story, illustrative of the intense scrutiny of minutiae 
irevalent among Prussian officialdom, came directly to the author while 
q Germany, and he believes it to be quite true. 

In Breslau, Silesia, there is a government hospital, likewise an 
,rsenal. Some time ago both institutions were asked to send to Berlin 
, detailed inventory of the public property in each, also an estimate 
or its upkeep during the ensuing year. Each institution dutifully re- 
torted in its inventory "one cat," and the hospital also reported a re- 
[uest for 20 pfennigs per day for "milk and meat for said cat." The 

1 It was complained that although men of non-noble birth sometimes 
[ot into the lower grades of the Prussian officers, very few ever were 
>ronioted to high command. 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS GENIUS IS 

arsenal made no such request. Presently the director of each esta 
lishment received, an official envelope from Berlin requesting an answ 
to the following dilemma: — "Why did the hospital require upke 
money for its cat, while the arsenal made no corresponding requisitio: 
Was the hospital wasting the 'Kaiser und KonigV funds? Or was t 
arsenal failing to feed its cat properly and therefore allowing the pub: 
livestock to deteriorate?" 

The two "highly well-born" directors held a meeting and framed 
respectful answer. They explained that in the hospital the supply 
mice, rats, etc., was so small, a maintenance fund for the cat w 
absolutely necessary; in the arsenal, however, the local cat enjoyed su 
opportunities for private foraging that there was no need of a dema: 
on His Majesty's treasury. This explanation proved satisfactory 
Berlin and the papers in the case were peacefully filed. 

As another somewhat dissimilar instance of the zeal for excessi 
regulation characteristic of the new German regime, may be noticed t 
usage, in various cities, notably Leipzig (Saxon indeed, but under Pn 
sian influence), of posting in each trolley-car the cost to a passeng 
should he break one of the windows, the expense varying according 
the size of the glass. It was alleged that students would sometim 
compute the cost of thus smashing up the entire car, make up the nec< 
sary purse, and then proceed to execute their learned project; when t 
process was finished paying over the required sum to the grinni: 
official with perfect good humor on both sides. 



CHAPTER X 

THE OLD PILOT AND THE NEW CAPTAIN OP GERMANY 

BETWEEN 1871 and 1914 the newly created German Em 
pire enjoyed a material and economic expansion which 
astonished the world. Only the United States of America 
seemed growing faster in population, wealth and prosperity ; 
and in some respects German expansion (based as it was on an 
exhausted, limited soil; surpassed that of the Western Repub- 
lic with its virgin continent and enormous area. Great as 
were the Prussian military achievements in 1866 and 1870 
they seemed less startling than the Prussian economic achieve- 
ments in the next generation. 

Statistics are often repellent impersonal things, but they 
can tell a long and significant story in a very few words. In 
1871 the population of the German Empire had been barely 
41,000,000. In 1890 it was 49,400,000. In 1900 it was 56,- 
360,000. In 1913 it was estimated at the very least at 66,000,- 
000. The Empire, in other words, was increasing more rapidly 
than any other country in Europe save proline but backward 
Russia. This great increase in population, however, was be- 
ing met by such industrial expansion, such opportunities for 
gainful employment that Germans were not constrained in 
great numbers to emigrate beyond seas. v After the disappoint- 
ments of 1848, tens of thousands of virile Germans had come 
to America, partly for political reasons, but a greater number 
had emigrated solely to better their personal fortunes. This 
emigration had not ceased in 1871. Between e.g. 1880 and 
1892 no less than 1,700,000 children of the Fatherland de- 
parted from their native soil for the United States alone. 
Others went in large numbers to Brazil, Argentina and Can- 
ada. But this was before the new imperial regime had caught 
its full stride. As the opportunities for successful industry 
increased at home, the stream of emigration sank to a mere 

194 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 19 

trickle. In 1905 only about 28,000 Germans quitted the Er 
pire for good, — 26,000 of them for the United States. Ju 
before the great war the numbers were even less (25,800 ; 
all in 1913). These figures are eloquent witnesses to two ir 
portant facts: I. The domestic prosperity of Germany hi 
become so great that as a rule only the "black sheep/' ar 
the chronically unsuccessful were anxious to emigrate ; I 
There was little justification for the demand for great cc 
onies to absorb the surplus population and keep it still und< 
the Kaiser's banner — because, in fact, there was no surpli 
population to send away. 

Until rather shortly before the unification of the nation 1 
Bismarck, Germany had ranked as a decidedly poor lai 
mainly given to agriculture. Her wealth could not compa 
with that of England, France, or (considering respecti 
sizes) Belgium and Holland. Amsterdam was for a loi 
time a much more important financial center than Berlin. 

In 1842 a German professor discussing the rise of social is 
in other countries declared that Germany had nothing to fe 
from such a movement, because the country was so complete 
given over to agriculture that it did not possess any regul 
artisan industrial class. Between his time, however, ai 
1871 a great deal had been accomplished. Railways we 
built, many kinds of manufactures were initiated, and a cla 
of city toilers, as against mere peasants, had developed. T. 
greatest change, however, was to take place during the for 
years after the victory over France. The great war indei 
nity ($1,000,000,000) was indeed a very doubtful benefit 
some of the conquerors. It supplied the German financie 
with a capital larger than they were prepared for and 
opened the door to an era of reckless speculation, stock-jobbii 
and downright rascality which had its natural climax in 
great business panic in the seventies. Nevertheless the i 
demnity did provide the German nation with enough capil 
and credit to get itself industrially and economically ful 
upon its feet. 

What followed can again best be summed up in figur 
hi 1882 the number of Germans kept busy by manufactui 



196 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and commerce was about 20,000,000. In 1910 it was 35,000,- 
000. In 1885 less than 4,000,000 tons of pig iron were smelted 
in Germany; in 1913 about 15,000,000. In 1891, 73,000,000 
tons of coal sufficed for the nation; in 1913, 185,000,000 tons 
were needed and supplied ; and to complete the story as late 
as 1890 the export trade of Germany was worth only about 
$875,000,000. In 1913 it was quite $2,500,000,000. In short, 
the Empire founded by Bismarck was second in its manufac- 
tures only to Great Britain, "the workshop of the world. " 
German technical skill, coupled with admirable methods of 
seeking trade, advancing credits and retaining the good will 
of foreign customers, the cheapness and usually the utility 
of German manufactures of every kind, the adroitness with 
which the imperial government used its great diplomatic in- 
fluence to back up its merchant and commercial travelers: — 
these combined factors accounted for most of the triumph. 
The demands of the manufacturer of course implied a cor- 
responding exploitation of the nation's coal and iron mines, 
natural advantages with which Germany is almost as much 
favored as England. The great commerce also implied the 
development of a correspondingly great merchant marine. 
Unlike the United States, which was endeavoring to build up 
a world trade carried almost exclusively on foreign bottoms, 
the statesmen of the Empire regarded the German merchant 
ship as the indispensable ally of the German merchant. Some 
steamship lines were subsidized outright ; others received less 
direct but nevertheless very genuine official encouragement. 
It was commonly reported that the imperial family had in- 
vested much of its private fortunes in the Hamburg-American 
and the North German Lloyd companies, the two greatest 
steamship corporations in the world. 1 In 1871 the German 
merchant marine had been insignificant; in 1913 it was the 
second greatest on the planet and was giving its British rival 
sore anxiety as regards supremacy in the carrying trade. 

i Herr Ballin, the head of the Hamburg- American Line, was so inti- 
mate with William II that he was frequently called, after the medieval 
usage, the "Emperor's Jew" — i.e., official money-lender — by captious 
German Anti-Semites. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 197 

Naturally, since the extent of German arable land was fixed 
by the boundary stones, there had been no corresponding 
expansion in the nation's agriculture. The great landed in- 
terests of Prussia, however, insisted on wringing every pos- 
sible favor out of the government, and they were never frankly 
abandoned (as in free trade England) to the competition of 
American, Argentinian and Australian wheat. But it seemed 
impossible for Germany to feed herself completely. She had 
to import about 4,500,000 tons of cereals per year to cover 
her home deficiencies. This did not seem to be a serious dan- 
ger, however. The Empire was not on an island. If she 
were at war with Russia (a great wheat country) she could 
still import from overseas. If she were blockaded by the 
naval might of England she could still draw abundant sup- 
plies from Russia. That Russia and England would both 
unite in warfare against Germany, seemed in view of the 
diplomatic situation, grossly improbable — at least until a very 
few years before Armageddon. 

Everywhere in the Empire the cities grew by leaps and 
bounds — even as in the American "Western States. In 1870 
Hamburg possessed barely 350,000 inhabitants ; in 1910 nearly 
1,000,000. In 1870 Berlin boasted only 820,000 ; in 1910 over 
2,000,000. As for the expansion of such "iron" towns as 
Essen, the seat of the famous Krupp works, it had been simply 
phenomenal. From about 50,000 in 1870, it had swollen to 
about 300,000 on the eve of the great war. Such were the 
outward evidences, to be read by all men, of the mighty 
change that had come over the most powerful nation in Eu- 
rope. 

It was inevitable that a physical transformation as complete 
and dramatic as this should be followed by a more subtle, 
but none the less significant, change in the whole mood and 
temper of the German people. In the ages before Bismarck 
the nation certainly had suffered grievously from an excess 
of what might be called "other-worldliness." In the 18th 
century an ill-natured Frenchman, Voltaire, had said that 
France had elected to rule the land, England the sea, and 
Germany the clouds. There was a germ of truth in this un- 



198 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

fair sarcasm. For example, the supreme national hero for 
two-thirds of Germany was not a general, a law-giver, or even 
a poet, but a theologian — Martin Luther. The Fatherland 
had produced many giants in learning, letters and art, but 
almost none of them, save the philosopher Lant,, 1 had come 
from the original provinces of Prussia. Lessing. Fichte, Lu- 
ther and Wagner were Saxons, Holbein and Diirer Bavarians, 
Goethe from Frankfort, Wieland, Schiller and Hegel were 
Swabians, Beethoven a Rhinelander and Bach a Thuringian. 
Prussia and its spirit had therefore never been the guide of 
Germany in matters intellectual. 

The average Teuton of the age preceding Bismarck con- 
trasted absolutely in temper, ambitions and methods with his 
hard, efficient, practical grandsons of 1914 and their intense 
pursuit of the material forms of success. Germans them- 
selves, writing shortly before the great war, stated this change 
very frankly. Said one (Fuchs), "The German of a hun- 
dred years ago was poor, despised, ridiculed and defrauded. 
He was the uncomplaining slave of others: his fields were 
their battle ground, and the goods which he had inherited 
from his fathers were trodden under foot and dispersed. He 
shed his blood heroically without asking why. He never trou- 
bled when the riches of the outside world were divided with- 
out regard to him. [Nevertheless] as he sat in his little bare 
room high under the roof, in simple coat and clumsy shoes, 
his heart was full of sweet dreams and uplifted by the chords 
of Beethoven to a rapture which threatened to rend his breast. 
. . . The happiness of his longing consumed him, and as he 
listened to Schubert's song his soul became one with the soul 
of the universe." 

Professor Rein of Jena University wrote bluntly, "Have we 
Germans kept a harmonious balance between the economic 
and moral side of our development? . . . Not so: ... in the 
nation as in the individual we see with the increase of wealth 
the decrease of moral power. ' ' 

Other candid students of the nation's tendencies deplored 
the growing unwillingness to keep up the old German inter- 

i He was, it is worth noting, of Scottish ancestry. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 199 

est in philosophy and all other non-ntilitarian sciences and 
the demonstrable fact that the nation of "poets and thinkers" 
was becoming a nation of soldiers, factory magnates and com- 
mercial adventurers. Doubtless Germany had lived in the 
clouds too long ; a reasonable return to Mother Earth was very 
desirable; but what took place under the new Empire w T as 
not so much a reaction as a revolution : a revolution that was 
to affect the entire world. 

But whatever the criticisms, the new regime in Germany 
certainly produced an astonishing outward success. For the 
first time since the Middle Ages the Teutonic genius for prac- 
tical achievement was to get full scope for its energies. The 
nation seemed politically united if not politically free; its 
rulers might be autocrats but they committed none of the 
clumsy blunders of traditional despotism. School, church, 
factory, army, diplomatic service, university — all were articu- 
lated in the great disciplined Prussian machine working to- 
gether to make the Fatherland rich and glorious. The reward 
came naturally as the result of the effort. In 1914 not merely 
was Prussianized Germany leading all the nations in very 
many forms of cultural and economic achievement, she was 
making open-minded foreign students doubt whether (in 
view of the relative success of the two systems) the democ- 
racies of England, France and America were all that was 
claimed for them. Democracy was on the defensive and on 
trial all over the world in 1914 — and Prussia seemed the real 
prosecutor at the bar. 

Nevertheless, public life in the strengthened Fatherland 
had been by no means entirely overshadowed by economic 
activity between 1871 and 1914. It ran in its own peculiar 
channels ; it certainly avoided those bewildering changes which 
mark the annals of countries ruled by parliamentary or popu- 
lar majorities. The Prussian theory required that the govern- 
ment should be "above all parties," listening to their com- 
plaints and suggestions with paternal indulgence, but reserv- 
ing the final decision for its own wisdom. A "government," 
however, is after all a human institution. Between 1871 and 
1914 it may be fairly said that two men successively consti- 



200 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

tuted the disposing force in the " government" of Germany: 
from 1871 to 1890 Otto von Bismarck; from 1890 to 1914 
"William II of Hohenzollern. To trace the deeds and policies 
of the twain is to trace the history of the Empire. 

William I of course was the Emperor and King down to 
his death in 1888. He w T as a kindly moderate man of limited 
talent and vision, and an understanding almost entirely con- 
fined to things military. But he was a man of keen personal 
honor, genuinely religious and anxious for the best good of 
his people — as he comprehended it, — and he had two enormous 
assets: — he was entirely conscious of his own lack of genius, 
and he was able to select certain very great ministers — Bis- 
marck, Moltke, and Roon — to hold them in office despite 
popular clamor, to grant them a free rein for their policies, 
and to give them honest moral support in all they decided to 
do. As Bismarck said of him, "When anything of importance 
was going on, he usually began by taking the wrong road : but 
in the end he always allowed himself to be put straight again." 
This willingness to hearken to and to support good counsel 
brought him a magnificent reward. The reign of this plain 
unassuming soldier ended amid a galaxy of glory; as "Kaiser 
Wilhelm de Grosse" he passed into official history, being thus 
put on the level of Alexander and Charlemagne by his en- 
thusiastic grandson. 1 

Between Bismarck and his Emperor the relations were of 
the uttermost friendship ; not merely those of sovereign and 
minister. Several times the two men did not see eye to eye: 
then the chancellor would coerce the monarch by suggesting 
that he had better resign. "Never!" was always the em- 
phatic answer; and the monarch gracefully yielded and all 
went on as before. So long as William I lived, any displace- 
ment of Bismarck was inconceivable. He was virtually the 
dictator of Germany, and undoubtedly the most potent man 
in all Europe. 

Bismarck and his sovereign were alike persons of modera- 
tion who did not let a great victory turn their heads. The 

i A more just title for "William the Great" would have been "William 
the Victorious." 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 201 

chancellor, more fortunate than his contemporaries Cavour 
and Lincoln, who died in the hour of their triumphs, had the 
great privilege of living twenty-seven years after the unifica- 
tion of Germany, and of seeing his creation grow from 
strength to strength. He looked on Germany as a "satiated 
state." It needed no new European conquests. He was not 
even enthusiastic about acquiring foreign colonies. He saw 
no requirement for a great navy. In the nineteen years dur- 
ing which he remained Chancellor after 1871 his main effort, 
therefore, was to preserve peace and to promote internal pros- 
perity. He accomplished the former by creating the Triple 
Alliance, the formation of which is described elsewhere (p. 
318. He promoted internal prosperity and public stability 
by a series of social and economic measures, mostly adroit but 
some merely repressive, of which many details have no place 
in this story. 

In 1873 Bismarck came to loggerheads with the Catholic 
Church over the question of the right, of the government to 
control education. The contest was a bitter one, because the 
chancellor had set his heart on making all the clergy of Ger- 
many, Protestant and Catholic, the convenient agents of the 
state. Catholic priests were not to be allowed to exercise 
their functions in Prussia, unless they had spent three years 
in a university under government control, and had received 
a government certificate. Priests and bishops who did not 
fall in with this program were subject to suspension from 
office and even to fines and imprisonment. Of course the 
Catholic clergy resisted with all the power at their disposal, 
and the Pope encouraged them. In this ' ' Kultur-Kampf ' ' 
("War in defense of Civilization") Bismarck persisted until 
1878, when he found the rise of the socialists much more dan- 
gerous than the Catholics; then he gradually withdrew most 
of the obnoxious laws and made a friendly treaty with the 
Vatican. The net result of the struggle was, however, not 
advantageous to Bismarck. In self-defense the Catholics had 
formed a solid political party, the so-called "Center" (Cen- 
trum). This soon had many seats in the Reichstag and did 
not dissolve when the Kultur-Kampf was over. The Centrum 



202 THE ROOTS OP THE WAR 

was to remain a great factor in the Reichstag down to 1914, 
oscillating now to the Conservatives, now to the Liberals, 
and always demanding a high price for supporting the gov- 
ernment on critical measures. Bismarck's first contest in the 
new Empire consequently was hardly fortunate. 

He did not prosper much better in his second contest. The 
socialists were coming rapidly to the front, now that Germany 
was industrializing itself. Karl Marx (1818-1883) had be- 
gun to publish in 1867 his great work Das Kapital (" Capi- 
tal" ), sometimes styled "the working man's Bible." The 
socialist movement was taking a definite form in Germany, 
and showing itself as a formidable political agitation. The 
socialists were of course ultra-radicals. They wished not 
merely a liberal political regime but an economic revolution. 
They were outspoken in their hopes for a republic in place 
of Hohenzollernism. Bismarck undertook to fight them the 
instant their propaganda seemed serious. Two unsuccessful 
attempts to murder William I, which the chancellor imputed, 
probably unjustly, to socialistic conspiracies, enabled him to 
carry an extremely severe law in 1878, prohibiting publica- 
tions, meetings and associations having for their purpose "the 
subversion of the social order," and authorizing the govern- 
ment to proclaim martial law in any city threatened with 
labor disturbances. These laws were to have effect for twelve 
years, and the zealous German police understood excellently 
how to enforce them. The movement, however, though driven 
into hiding, was not checked. Secret societies and papers 
smuggled in from Switzerland continued to spread the obnox- 
ious doctrines. There was an increased socialist vote at each 
election. 

Bismarck's attack on the socialists was not, however, purely 
negative. He undertook to pass a number of measures to 
improve the lot of the working classes, frankly confessing that 
he was throwing a sop to the proletariat to make them con- 
tented with the Prussian regime. "Give the workingman 
the right to work as long as he is healthy," he said in 188f4, 
"assure him care when he is sick and maintenance when he 
is old . . . then if the State will show a little more Christian 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 203 

solicitude for the workingman, the socialists will sing their 
song in vain." 

In 1885 laws for accident and sickness insurance for the 
industrial classes were put into effect. In 1889 there fol- 
lowed a law for insurance for the aged and the incapacitated. 
These laws were much discussed in England and America, 
and considered worthy of partial imitation. They undoubt- 
edly wrought considerable good in Germany. A portion of 
the expense for the pensions was paid by the employers of 
the laborers, and part also by the state — but a very large 
fraction had to be deducted from the wages of the laboring 
man himself. There was much complaint at the enforced 
contribution by many who could not hope (for various rea- 
sons) to enjoy the final benefit. Many fraudulent cases of 
disablement and sickness were reported, and investigators 
claimed that the responsibility and initiative of many work- 
ingmen were stunted. The chief complaint, however, was that 
this insurance legislation appeared in every case as a benefac- 
tion from "above," not as a gain for the brotherhood of men. 
The laws were not a decided failure, but the workingmen 
were dissatisfied and were not turned away from socialism. 

Bismarck was more successful with his protective tariff. 
Before 1879 Germany had been partially on a low tariff basis. 
In that year the chancellor frankly espoused protection and 
put through a high tariff bill. The theoretical question of free 
trade vs. protection need not be discussed here ; but it is fair 
to say that Bismarck's high tariff gave a favorable impulse to 
German industries then just getting on their feet, and helped 
to keep alive native agriculture struggling against American 
and Russian wheat. The manufacturers and the great landed 
proprietors of Germany were ready for years, therefore, to 
rise up before the chancellor and call him blessed. 

Bismarck saw another thing accomplished in the 1880 's 
— albeit without enthusiasm on his part. There were strong 
commercial impulses in Germany calling for the acquisition 
of colonies, and the possession of a chain of colonies around 
the world, after the fashion of those of England, France or 
little Holland, would certainly flatter the pride of the people 



204 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of the strongest monarchy of Europe. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, Germany had come on the field as a great power very 
late. There were not many unclaimed and sparsely populated 
or barbarous lands available. India was preempted; as also 
of course was Australia. South America was under the aegis 
of the Monroe Doctrine and much of Africa was already di- 
vided. However, public pressure forced Bismarck to accede 
to the demands that certain "claims" established in Africa 
and Oceania by German private merchants and adventurers 
be transformed into downright annexations as colonies. In 
this way in Africa Germany acquired Togoland, Kamerun, 
German Southwest Africa and German East Africa, — domin- 
ions great in extent, but for the most part roaring wildernesses 
or jungles and by no means equal to the African holdings of 
England, France or even to the new Congo Free State under 
Belgian protection. In the Pacific, too, German traders were 
allowed to hoist the Kaiser's flag over parts of New Guinea 
and the adjacent "Solomon" isles and to establish a claim 
to Samoa which was ultimately settled (after grievous fric- 
tion with America) by a division of that small archipelego 
between Germany and the United States. 1 

These were significant things for Bismarck's home admin- 
istration, but of course they lacked the dramatic interest of 
the days between 1862 and 1871 when he first fought the 
Prussian Liberals in behalf of the royal prerogative, and 
then "made Germany" by the three scientifically provoked 
wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870. In truth, Bismarck was greater 
as a diplomat than as a civil statesman. The secluded office 
where, around the table-head, a few diplomats could meet — 
and where he, by a marvelous mingling of cajollery, flattery, 
brusqueness, blunt threatening and insinuating suggestions, 
could induce them to put their signatures upon some secret 
treaty which was to settle the fate of empires — that was his 
true kingdom. In him (as has already been said) the old 
style diplomacy found its incarnate genius. 

So long as William I, his bosom friend, sat on the throne, 
Bismarck's position was inviolable. He seemed one of the 

i For a table of the German colonies in 1914 see appendix to volume. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 205 

fixtures of Europe and an indispensable prop of the Hohen 
zollerns. By his system of alliances (see p. 318) he had iso^ 
lated France and made it impossible for her to execute scheme* 
for "revenge," he had assured himself of the good will oJ 
Russia, he had also maintained official cordiality with Eng 
land and he had almost convinced the world that the enormou 
German army was — as he always proclaimed it — an engin< 
solely to ensure peace. In March, 1888, however, the Em 
peror-King, a hoary veteran of ninety-one, slept with his fa 
thers. His character, military, but kindly and unpretending 
has already been described. In his death Bismarck lost no 
merely his grateful sovereign but his best personal friend. 

"William I was succeeded by his son Frederick III, wh< 
had married Victoria, Princess Royal of England and eldes 
daughter of Victoria the great queen. He had been on bac 
terms with Bismarck earlier, but for long they had been recon 
ciled. Frederick, however, did not share the political viewi 
of his father. There is no reason for presuming that he woulc 
have proved a radical or a democrat, but he undoubtedly 
stood for a much more liberal parliamentary regime in Ger 
many than had existed. Had fortune given him a twenty 
year reign, he might well have so changed the institution* 
of the Empire that the catastrophe of 1914 would never havi 
been possible ; but the fate which let Julius Caesar be strickei 
down just as he was about to reform the world was unfriendly 
to this monarch also. Fell disease was upon him when hi, 
father died. He was proclaimed Emperor on March 9th 
1888. Already there had been a major operation for a ma 
lignant growth in his throat. The case was hopeless. Fred 
erick could hardly take up the reins of power. He livec 
long enough to hold a few sorrowful reviews of his guard 
"Hail, soldiers: — I about to die salute you!" — is the oh 
Roman gladiatorial chant the dying Caesar is said to have ut 
tered to his troops. One or two ultra-bureaucratic minister] 
were dismissed by his orders. Then on June 15th this ninety 
six-day reign ended. There was great grief in Germany 
The liberals had expected great things when Frederick cam< 
to the throne : he was a man of sufficient force and kindlines: 



206 THE ROOTS OP THE WAR 

to have handled Bismarck with discretion and to have intro- 
duced reasonable changes. 

For the second time in one year the army of Prussia took 
oath to a new "Kaiser und Konig." William. I had died a 
very old man. Frederick III also was not youthful; but 
now the imperial power passed to a young man of twenty- 
nine years, with all the temper, ardor and restless enthusiasm 
of the new, aggressive and materialistic Hohenzollern regime. 
William II had been brought up to reverence the abilities of 
Bismarck, but the two men were of such temperaments that it 
was impossible for the one to wait until death should remove 
the great minister to whom he owed his imperial crown; or 
for the other to efface himself before the imperious young mas- 
ter so unlike his kindly grandfather. 1 During 1889, while 
William II was getting into the saddle, there was no outward 
break, but the great chancellor found that his power was being 
undermined and that the Emperor was open to other advisers. 
Then followed friction about the question of renewing the 
laws against the socialists, and the final catastrophe came over 
the issue of maintaining the regular usage that the Prussian 
ministers should report directly to the Chancellor (as Min- 
ister-President of Prussia) and not to the Emperor-King. 
William II was determined to take into his own hands all the 
control of the Prussian departments and so to strip the Chan- 
cellor of half of his powers. In March, 1890, there was a 
famous interview in Berlin at the imperial Schloss. The Em- 
peror explained his intention of making the change. The 
Chancellor objected. The Emperor was insistent that his will 
must be carried out, "if not by Bismarck, then by another. " 
Flint struck steel: "Then I am to understand, your Maj- 
esty," spoke the man who had saved Hohenzollernism 2 and 
made the German Empire, "that I am in your way?" 
"Yes!" came the firm retort of the young man before him. 

i William II in abundant speeches lauded and even deified the charac- 
ter of "his sainted grandfather," but he never imitated his qualities of 
modesty, self-distrust and gratitude. 

2 Considering the impetus to Liberalism in Prussia between 1S59 and 
1866, any missteps or faltering of Bismarck as minister then would 
have undoubtedly ruined the whole Hohenzollern dynasty. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 2 

Bismarck bowed his head, took prompt leave, and depar 
to his residence where he drew up a letter of resignation, 
wished to take pains with the document and did not hurr} 
to the palace as the Emperor wished. William sent verba] 
urging its prompt despatch. It came not, and the next mo 
ing the Emperor drove out in haste and caused Bismarck 
be aroused from bed to meet his angry sovereign. Willi 
had heard that Windthorst (a politician he detested) 1 
lately called upon Bismarck. He now told the chancellor 
did not wish his ministers to meet parliamentary leaders wi 
out his permission. Bismarck denied that there had been i 
political discussion, and said he could not allow any sup 
vision over the guests he invited to his own house. 

1 'Not if I order it as your sovereign?" demanded the kais 

"No," spoke back the seventy-four-year-old man who 1 
given his visitor everything. "The commands of my K 
cease in my wife's drawing-room." 

After that no reconciliation was possible. The resignat 
of the chancellor produced an enormous sensation, and v 
the Emperor for the nonce great unpopularity. In vain "V 
liam showered all manner of titles and decorations on 
man he had declared superfluous. "The dog's kick-out" I 
marck angrily called them, likening his new title of "Di 
of Lauenburg" (which he would not accept) to the b( 
thrust with which the Prussian squires were wont to repel 
too eager attentions of devoted hounds. 1 

i Bismarck retired to his residence at Friedrichsruh, where for s 
years he was visited by admiring delegations from all parts of ( 
many. His relations with the court were such that, had he been 
lesser man, probably William II would have prosecuted him. A H 
burg newspaper became the regular organ for his bitter criticisms 
the government and, by very clear implication, of the Emperor him; 
The government retaliated by affecting to place his family under a 1 
of ostracism. However, in 1894, there was a formal reconciliation, 
though it may be questioned whether his relations with the Emp 
were ever in the least cordial. Bismarck died July 30th, 1898. 
doubt his dominant personality made him a very difficult personage 
a much more conciliatory monarch than William II to get along \^ 
but the circumstances of his dismissal were a foretaste of the th 
the new ruler had waiting for all the world. 



)8 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

And so, as a famous English cartoonist captioned his pic- 
ire, William II "uushipped the pilot." Henceforth, what- 
/er the Emperor s fortunes, they were at least of his own 
taking. From 1890 down to 1914 the third ruler of the new 
erman Empire, far beyond the wont of most monarchs, did 
lat which seemed right in his own eyes. 

William II of Hohenzollern is not at this writing a person- 
am of whom it is easy for an American to write impartially, 
lefore 191-1 Transatlantic opinion was, like that of all the 
2st of the world, bewildered at his versatile performances 
ud his kaleidoscopic moods of utterance; but despite his 
bvious lack of sympathy for democratic institutions and 
lany performances that seemed to savor of crass meclieval- 
>m, he was not without many ardent admirers in the United 
tates, and criticism of him was for the most part playful 
nd insignificant. 1 The same was somewhat true in Great 
►ritain, even as the relations of Britain and Germany be- 
ame strained. There were not a few Frenchmen also who 
ntertained a covert admiration for this grandson of the con- 
ueror of Alsace-Lorraine. Since 191-1 his name has become 
nathema in every non-Teutonized land. What is here writ- 
2n is written with an honest attempt to speak soberly, 
ccurately and in a manner which will not bring regret to the 
uthor if he is suffered to re-read his words years later. 

William II was born in' 1859. He was the son of the then 
}rown Prince Frederick and of the Princess Royal Victoria 
f England. He received that systematic and severe dis- 
ipline in things military and administrative which the Hohen- 
ollern princes always received to fit them for their great 
ffice, idleness and levity never having been among the Prus- 
ian sins. His relations with his father were not very cor- 
Lial, with his mother even worse; but chilliness towards one's 

i Part of the good favor in which William II was held in America 
oubtless was part of the result of the world-wide German propaganda. 

have heard of a case in which the agents for a school text-book urged 
ts author to insert matter commendatory of the Emperor, as "likely 
o help the book in German-American communities." Probably these 
►ublishers (a very old and honorable firm) were perfectly unconscious 
hat they were being indirectly "worked" by foreign influences. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 2< 

parents seems to be a prerogative of Prussian crown prince 
and he was the apple of the eye of old Emperor William 
who gave him many personal lessons on the powers and respc 
sibilities which hedge about a throne. William II was ne\ 
weary of singing the praises of his grandfather on counth 
public occasions, although he gave his father's honorable me 
ory no more attention than the situation barely require 
He was twenty-nine when he came to the throne. When 
was only twenty-three, Bismarck, who had watched h: 
shrewdly from under his shaggy old eyebrows, is reputed 
have said, "He wishes to take the government into his o^ 
hands, he is energetic and determined, not at all disposed 
put up with parliamentary co-regents, a regular guardsma 
Perhaps some day, however, he may develop into the 'ro 
of bronze' of which we stand in need." A little later t 
young Prince sent the chancellor his own picture with t 
ominous Latin words written beneath it: "Cave! adsun 
("Take care: I am here"). However, when William II w 
proclaimed, he was supposed to be on excellent terms with 1 
chancellor. How the breach came has already been describe 
In 1888 William II began to reign. In 1890 he began 
govern. From that time onward Germany was subjected mo 
strictly to a personal government than almost any other gre 
country in modern tiynes. Bismarck was the first and last 
his prime ministers who really dared to pursue an indepec 
ent policy and tell him blunt truths to his face. None of t 
later chancellors were more than "handy men" to take t 
brunt of public criticism, to work out the laborious details 
a selected policy, to dress up the Emperor's ideas with smoo 
phrases and finally to be dismissed promptly when they ceas 
to please their master or when public dissent with the gover 
ment became too warm. In 1901 a favor-mongering thouj 
distinguished professor (Lamprecht) wrote a sketch of t 

i Notably in the case of Frederick the Great and his father Frederi 
William II. Of course William II was destined to be on very b 
terms with his own heir, the Crown Prince Frederick William, who 
it is rumored, the most violent Pan-Germans talked of setting in 1 
father's stead in case the Emperor declined to fall in with th< 
schemes for a "necessary war in 1914." 



10 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

aiser which was dutifully submitted to "William II for his 
rect approval. The All-Highest graciously allowed the fol- 
wing senteuce to staud aud be published: "When oue lis- 
ns to the [sovereign's] ministers oue is again and again 
nazed at the extent to which they merely repeat the Em- 
:ror's ideas, and whoever has seen opponents coming from 
1 interview with him must be struck equally at the way in 
hich they were dominated by the charm of his personality.' ' 
nd freely it must be admitted that often the eloquence, 
lability and undeniable magnetism of the Kaiser genuinely 
ipplemented that power of persuasion which a great office 
m give even to a very mediocre man. 

It may be agreed at the outset that William II was a person 
- noteworthy abilities. In the Middle Ages he would have 
on fame like the versatile Frederick II, "the wonder of the 
orld." As a wealthy private citizen under a republic he 
ould probably have developed high powers of leadership — 
Dt merely in politics, but in the field of education, philan- 
iropy and the encouragement of letters and art. He was 
so an honestly religious man. His frequent and seemingly 
itronizing references to the Deity as his constant associate 
l all worthy endeavor were probably perfectly sincere. It 
ay be left to the theologians to settle whether his "God" 
as the God of Christianity or some survival of a tribal deity; 
at it is only just to say that his belief was probably without 
le least conscious hypocrisy. He delighted in playing the 
Ttuoso, in giving authoritative hints to authors of grand 
3eras and symphonies, and also to artists and sculptors, espe- 
ally if their creations seemed to perpetuate the great deeds 
? the Hohenzollern dynasty. He took a keen interest in the 
Bvelopment of modern education, and in 1903 he publicly 
?cepted the interpretations of the Bible according to the 
idical "Higher Criticism" as propounded by the learned 
ctures of Professor Delitzch. He had a real eloquence, 
ad at patriotic assemblages, the launching of war-ships and 
le commemoration of great battles was able to carry his audi- 
lce with him in genuine nights of oratory. He understood 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 211 

also the history of the past, especially of his own house, in 
detail and was able to sprinkle his speeches with superabun- 
dant, but usually very apt, historical allusions. To distin- 
guished foreign visitors he could be graciousness and affability 
incarnate; fond of friendly interviews, charming "indiscre- 
tions" of frank speech, and of hospitality without insulting 
condescension. More than one professor from a great Amer- 
ican university seems to have been sent home rendered a 
convinced advocate of the cause of Prussianism by the cheap 
bribe of an invitation to an informal luncheon at Potsdam 
and a few banal and harmless words from the man before 
whom all Germany stood in trembling awe. The Emperor 
too was a mighty traveler and yachtsman. He knew the 
fjords of Norway, the isles of Greece and the British coast, 
especially the Isle of Wight in regatta week. His frequent 
wanderings were not merely for political effect, but because 
of a keen interest in men and things. Der Reise-Kaiser 
("the Traveler-Emperor") his subjects sometimes called him, 
because he was so often away from them. Indeed he was 
probably quite sincere in his statement that he wished he 
could see his way clear to visit America. In short, here was a 
man sent upon earth with vast powers for good or for mis- 
chief ; and very many of his qualities seemed noble and high. 
But William II was born under the shadow of Prussianism 
and the traditions of the House of Hohenzollern had steeped 
his soul. He had been brought up in a military atmosphere, 
and after his twentieth year was almost divorced from civil 
life until the crown was thrust upon him. In 1885 he was 
appointed colonel of the Hussar-guard. His teachers and 
companions were old Prussian officers who had surrounded 
Von Moltke, and young Prussian noblemen who longed for 
the summons to battle. Everything around him taught him or 
told him two things — first, that the sovereign of Prussianized 
Germany ruled by the grace of God and that it was the duty 
of all honest subjects to obey him ; second, that under a kindly 
applauding Providence, he owed throne, honors, and all else 
to the Prussian army, without whose loyal support he would 



212 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

be instantly reduced to impotence. When he took power his 
first act was to make an address to "his army"; * only three 
days later did he issue a statement to "his people," and re- 
peatedly during his reign he voiced the fateful sentiment, 
"The soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities, 
have welded the German Empire together. My confidence is 
placed on the army." 

Whether, assuming he had found no Reichstag and no 
Prussian Constitution (lame as it was), he would have allowed 
them to be created, is a question without an answer. Doubt- 
less he found it useful that his subjects had some orderly 
means for periodic ebullitions on political subjects, and a 
recognized method of presenting their petitions for his august 
consideration. In a long series of famous utterances, how- 
ever, he made plain his conviction that since he ruled by the 
express summons and commission of God, therefore in the 
last analysis his own will was the highest earthly law. As 
early as March, 1890, he made the famous statement, "Every 
one who is against me I shall crush!" 

Since His Imperial and Royal Majesty spoke frequently 
on the subject of his own supreme office, a list of even his most 
notable saj'ings thereon would be lengthy. Here are a few 
very familiar ones, extremely hackneyed to-day, but which 
seem likely to be long remembered in history : 

"One shall be the master, even I !" 

"The will of the king is the highest law." (Suprema lex 
regis voluntas — a sentiment written in the "Golden Book of 
Munich" in liberal Bavaria.) 

To some army recruits about to be sworn in: "In the 
presence of the socialist agitation it may happen — though 
God forefend — that I shall order you to shoot down your 

i In this address to the army, William II declared, "I swear to re- 
member that the eyes of my ancestors look down on me from the other 
world, and that I shall one day have to render account to them for the 
honor and glory of the army." 

At the time it was recalled that his father had first addressed the 
people, and then the army; but it was to be inferred that the second 
William was to be a Frederick the Great, and not a "Citizen-Emperor" 
as the liberal Frederick III had longed to be known. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 213 

relatives, brothers, yes, even parents; but you must obey my 
commands without murmuring." 

Some of his claims to divine commission and consequent 
autocracy were of inconceivable bluntness : thus e. g., ' ' The 
Hohenzollern house is imbued with a feeling of duty resting 
upon the knowledge that it has been set up by God and has to 
render only to Him and to its own conscience an account of 
what it does for the good of its land. ' ' 

Again: "Just as the first King of Prussia said, 'I have 
created my own crown ' ... so, like my imperial grandfather, 
I represent monarchy by the grace of God. ' ' 

"(The office of monarch) is fraught with a terrible re- 
sponsibilty to God alone — from which no man, no minister, 
no Parliament, can relieve the princes. " 

And finally: "Considering myself as the instrument of 
the Lord, I go on my way . . . and so I am indifferent to 
the views and the opinions of the moment." 

In the seventeenth century Louis XIV, at the time he was 
threatening to dominate the world through France, is alleged 
to have made the famous statement, "I am the state" — and 
the world trembled and armed herself to resist him. In the 
twentieth century William II made statements equally blunt 
and crude — and England and America were only mildly 
amused, the words seemed so grotesquely medieval. But 
there was nothing medieval about the German war-machine 
which this elocutionary monarch controlled. 

This Emperor, as stated, could have useful servants, the 
indispensable viziers to his power, but he could have no real 
ministers to add their strength to his own. "A good 
minister," Bismarck once said, "should not trouble about 
his sovereign's favor, but speak his mind freely." Bismarck 
had acted on that theory and had lost his position for his 
pains. After him had come Capri vi (1890-94), who labored 
industriously and honestly to serve his master and the country, 
but succeeded in neither. He was beset by the junkers on one 
side, for their loyalty always made them hungry for govern- 
ment favor, and by the liberals on the other. His master 
grew tired of him and in 1894 threw him over. He was the 



214 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

first of several chancellors who were mere shadows in the 
former chair of the welder of German unity. 

After Caprivi came Prince Hohenlohe (1894-1900), an 
elderly man of considerable ability, and one who had kept on 
fairly friendly terms with Bismarck. He also soon found 
out that "a number of politicians and high placed busy- 
bodies were doing their best to discredit Die with His Majesty." 
He bought the support of the Conservatives by passing laws 
favoring the agricultural interests, but in the end the Kaiser 
wearied of him. Feeling that his power was slipping away„ 
he resigned in 1900. He put it in his memoirs that William 
II was actually waiting for his resignation, and already had 
chosen his successor. 

The next vizier to the All-Highest was Prince von Billow, 
"a diplomat and polished man of the world, gifted with a 
happy disposition, which never deserted him, even in the most 
difficult situations." Bismarck had declared in a famous 
speech, "We Germans fear God and nothing else in the 
world"; and a political wag asserted, "Biilow fears the 
junkers and nothing else in the world." For a time he got 
on excellently, knowing how to bend the Kaiser's personal 
whims and yet to retain something of his own personality. 
He managed for long to carry the government's measures 
through the Reichstag by means of compromises with the 
Catholic "Centrum" and the Conservatives. But in 1909 
the Conservatives, before whom he had kow-towed, deserted 
him, and held up his legislation. Already the Kaiser was 
tiring of him. He had tried haltingly to check his sovereign's 
habit of making very indiscreet speeches, although William 
had broken over the traces once and again. "You do not 
know how much I prevent!" Biilow said when reproved for 
failing to prevent a peculiar unwise utterance. Now the 
Emperor threw him over. Bethmann-Hollweg occupied his 
chair. 

This last chancellor before the mighty storm was known 
mainly as a quiet, fairly adroit politician and as a clever 
orator. He showed himself a good diplomat in the Balkan 
crisis of 1912-13, and even in retrospect he may be called, in 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 215 

the main, a lover of peace. But Bethmann-Hollweg was 
destined to a more lasting place in history than any chan- 
cellor since Bismarck, for in August, 1914, he was to make 
the famous speech wherein he said that Belgium must be 
violated, even wrongfully, ' ' because necessity knows no law ' ' ; 
and he was to describe a solemn treaty with England as a 
''scrap of paper." 

Concerning all these chancellors as well as the lesser 
ministers their helpers, a German writer left a clear-cut judg- 
ment shortly before the outbreak of the great war, "Our 
ministers are fairly capable officials (for ordinary routine 
duty) . . . But the idea of representing to the Emperor in- 
dependent opinions, plans or criticism, or of opposing him 
from a sense of duty — that would savor to them of sacrilege. " 
Yet all the while that the chancellors were thus failing in 
this plainest duty of a minister to a monarch, sycophants and 
parasites were pouring flatteries into the ears of William of 
Hohenzollern, which daily confirmed his ideas of his own 
greatness. One courtier is even reported to have told him un- 
abashed, "Your Majesty becomes every day more like Fred- 
erick the Great — but without his defects." Some of the 
Emperor's noble friends were doubtless men of parts and in- 
sight; others were personages over whose private lives it is 
best to draw a veil. In 1907 the famous editor Maximilian 
Harden in his Zukunft began a series of revelations as to 
the habits of certain individuals near and presumably dear 
to His Imperial and Royal Majesty. Long-drawn legal pro- 
ceedings followed. The character of the Emperor himself 
was left unstained, but the personal morals of his confidants 
Prince Philip Eulenburg and Count Kuno Moltke were left 
blasted before the' world. The net result of the prosecutions 
was good. The Emperor emancipated himself from at least 
part of the very unsavory clique that had surrounded him. 
He also allowed a relaxation in the outrageous press-laws 
which had permitted frequent prosecutions for lese-majeste 
for very innocent references to the doings and intentions of 
the ruler and his family and ministers. 

During the reign of William II there was very little 



216 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

domestic legislation which calls for extended comment. The 
chief task of the average chancellor, from 1895 onward, had 
been to induce the often recalcitrant Reichstags to vote the 
increasingly huge naval bills on which the Emperor had set 
his heart, and (less eontentiously as a rule) to provide for 
the steady increase of the army. The Conservatives with all 
their professed love for the throne and zeal for the army, 
were, as a class, by no means anxious to pay heavy taxes for 
a fleet ; 1 and it was necessary to buy their support by con- 
stant concessions to the agrarian interests, as well as to con- 
ciliate the Catholic "Centrum" by legislation favorable to the 
church. The making of the new German navy, however, is a 
story for another chapter, as are all other questions of im- 
perial foreign policy. 

The extremely severe laws of 1878 enacted by Bismarck 
against the socialists had not been renewed when they expired 
in 1890; nevertheless the Prussian police had abundant 
weapons in their arsenal wherewith to light against a move- 
ment which the Emperor and all the junker element regarded 
with indescribable anger. In 1895 the police used a law of 
1850 for dissolving the socialist organization in Berlin, and 
at every possible turn the whole power of the government was 
used against the unwelcome propaganda. Yet despite im- 
prisonments, fines, social ostracism and intimidation the social- 
ist vote grew steadily. The radical leaders were extremely 
skillful in keeping within the letter of the law and avoiding 
its spirit, in filling their newspapers with easily interpreted 
innuendo, and in using the privileges of the Reichstag to the 
fullest extent possible for a parliamentary body that was 
allowed to talk fairly freely, even if not really to govern. 

Since 1881, when the vote for the socialist candidates in a 
general Reichstag election were 311,961, their number of 
ballots increased on each dissolution of the parliament until 

i Many junkers, whose families regarded the army posts almost as 
hereditary perquisites, were not enthusiastic about the proposition to 
create a rival naval service which could hardly share the aristocratic 
traditions of the military department. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 217 

1912, when it had swelled to the menacing number of aboul 
4,250,000. Twice, by the unjust manner in which seats were 
gerrymandered, they lost in their membership in the Reichstag 
even though their popular vote was swelled. Thus in 1907 
they lost 38 seats at Berlin although their whole vote was 
increased by over 500,000 ; but in 1912 they added alike 750,- 
000 votes to their total, and won 63 new seats in the Reichs- 
tag. They had thus in all 110 seats, making them the 
largest single party in Germany, and so forcing the govern- 
ment to win the favor of nearly all the other disjointed and 
irresponsible parties, Conservatives, ''Centrum," National 
Liberals, Progressives, etc., to be able to carry through its 
measures. 

This great expansion of the socialist vote, however, did 
not imply that a large fraction of all the German nation was 
in favor of an ultra-socialistic Marxian regime. The social- 
ists themselves were seriously divided between the old-line 
theorists who wished for an abrupt revolution and a complete 
change in the ordinary methods of holding capital and 
property, and the newer element which aimed to bring a 
happier day by agitating for moderate practical reforms, 
while hoping for a general economic change through peaceful 
evolution. The organization of the socialist party was very 
perfect; its clubs, circles, officials, etc., were evidences of that 
same militaristic efficiency system, which its members de- 
nounced. However, great numbers of Germans, who had no 
real sympathy with even a denatured form of socialism, "voted 
with the Left" (i. e., against the government), to voice their 
general dislike of many features of the Hohenzollern regime. 
The balloting for the Reichstag was secret; the temptation to 
register a silent protest against the arrogance of the junkers 
and the maintenance of the three-class system in nearly all 
local elections, was very great. Had by any chance the social- 
ists found themselves possessed of the government, and 
abruptly tried to put their extreme economic theories into 
practice they would probably have been deserted promptly by 
very many of their nominal followers. It is irresponsibility, 



218 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and a desire to register a general protest, that often makes 
men feel ''radical" when they approach the ballot-box. 1 

Theoretically the socialists professed themselves utterly 
opposed to militarism, and their members voted against almost 
every increase of the army or fleet when the question came 
up in the Reichstag. Their opponents taunted them regularly 
upon their lack of patriotism, and in foreign lands many 
hopes were founded by ardent pacifists on the suggestions 
that in event of war the German socialists would refuse the 
summons to arms against "their brothers," the toilers of 
France, Russia and England. In the Reichstag and else- 
where, however, the socialist orators, although deprecating 
schemes for aggrandizement, always professed that if the 
Fatherland were really attacked they would "put their rifles 
to their shoulders as readily as their middle-class country- 
men." It was for the Emperor and his Prussian lords to 
see to it that every German believed the Fatherland had been 
"attacked," when the call came to arms in 1914. 

The socialists were in any case an anti-militarist and an 
anti-absolutist force. They represented the rising opposition 
of a great and very intelligent nation to the regime founded 
by Bismarck and perpetuated by William II. It was very 
probably the steady increase of their apparent influence which 
led the imperialists and Pan-Germans to feel the more ready 
for one great throw of the dice in 1914; — for if they won the 
victory they would be alike masters of the domestic and of 
the international world, and the hurrahs of conquest would 
stifle radicalism at home. Bismarck and Moltke had defeated 
Liberalism by humiliating first Austria and then France. 
The heirs to these giants would stifle socialism by bringing 
home the trophies of a defeated world. This was not the 
sole cause of Armageddon — but it was a contributing factor. 

In 1913 occurred an incident which brought the hostility 
between the military caste and the civilian element into 
dangerous relief, and taught many a German how com- 

1 Just as in American elections, very often citizens vote for a candi- 
date they know is unworthy, merely to rebuke the iniquitous "party in 
power" of which they are weary. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 219 

pletely visionary was his claim to be the citizen of a free 
nation. In the opinion of a shrewd official observer this affair 
decided the "system" — i. e., the military autocracy — upon a 
speedy war. 1 It certainly was a serious warning to the mili- 
tarists that their power was in danger, and that radical 
measures were necessary to rehabilitate their prestige. This 
famous incident has passed into history as the Zabern affair. 

Zabern was a pleasant little city in Alsace, and the fact 
that the trouble arose in the much-disputed "Reichsland" 
added nothing to the ease of smoothing out the quarrel. In 
its garrison was the 91st Prussian infantry, and among the 
officers thereof was a youthful lieutenant of the true junker 
school, a certain noble Baron von Forstner of some twenty 
years of age, who took his honors very seriously. School 
children and factory lads seem to have called names at him, 
and he, in addressing his men, seems to have retaliated by 
styling the Alsatian recruits Wackes, a local title of deroga- 
tion. There was another story that he had promised his men 
a ten-mark piece if one of them brought down a Social Demo- 
crat provided it came to shooting. The reports of von 
Forstner 's crude remarks spread ; the town papers grew caus- 
tic and the colonel of the garrison, von Reuter, warned the 
local civil magistrate, Director Mahler, to restore order (there 
having been small demonstrations) or he would do so him- 
self. On November 29, 1913, Mahler having refused to object 
to lawful proceedings, when a civilian crowd gathered in front 
of the barracks, von Reuter directed a subaltern to order it 
to go home. The angry burghers refused, whereupon the 
military charged out and arrested some fifteen civilians, in- 
cluding three high judges and the state prosecuting attorney 
himself who chanced to get caught in the throng. These four 
dignitaries were speedily released; the other civilians were 
held in durance vile over night and then released. 

This clash of burgher and soldier produced wrath through- 
out Germany; von Reuter was already hated by the liberals 
as an exponent of extreme junker theories. He was tried 
for violating the law which forbade the soldiery to interfere 

-James W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," p. 75. 



220 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

in civilian matters, but was promptly acquitted by his military 
court on a technicality. The wrath of the liberals was great, 
and it was shared by many level-headed conservatives. The 
Governor-General of Alsace himself felt constrained to resign 
as a protest at this usurpation of civilian functions — but an 
order from the Emperor commanding the military hence- 
forth to keep within their authority caused him to withdraw 
his action. 

Very quickly, however, Zabern and the noble lieutenant 
Baron von Forstner again gave business for the telegraph. 
This highborn gentleman had not been wisely withdrawn to 
another garrison town less acquainted with his mannerisms. 
He fell into an undignified altercation with a lame shoe- 
maker of the neighborhood. Very probably the clown pre- 
sumed upon his physical weakness and made unflattering re- 
marks. Von Forstner, not feeling that his opponent's in- 
firmity should be any protection, drew his saber and wounded 
the cripple. Once more there was uproar. Von Forstner 
was promptly tried by court martial. In a lower court he 
was convicted and sentenced to one year in custody ; a higher 
tribunal, however, promptly took up the case on appeal and 
acquitted the lieutenant ' ' for self-defense " ! 1 

Von Forstner had thus vindicated his " honor," so dear 
to every Prussian officer, by repaying revilings with a blow 
from the noble's weapon, but in the Reichstag civilian wrath 
boiled over. The defense of the government advanced by 
Bethmann-Hollweg was feeble and evasive; and oil was 
poured on the flames by the arrogance of the war-minister, 
who spoke also, and said bluntly that von Forstner might 
have been over-anxious to protect himself, but that such a 
"courageous young officer" was an asset to the nation. The 
chancellor was of course not so much to blame as the military 
officials, and behind them the Kaiser their chief, who had 
allowed the folly of a subaltern workman, and the "lewd fel- 
lows of the baser sort" in an Alsatian town, to make a great 

1 The crippled shoemaker was held by two soldiers while their lieu- 
tenant slashed him. Afterwards a pocket knife was discovered in the 
civilian's pocket. It was against this that the officer defended himself. 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 221 

national issue. But it was easier to bait Bethmann-Hollweg 
than William of Hohenzollern and the War Office. The 
Reichstag, on the 6th of December, 1913, passed a vote of 
censure upon the government, 393 to 54, only the ever-faithful 
Conservatives voting in behalf of the military. 

Had this vote of censure been carried in almost any other 
European parliament, the Prime Minister and all his subordi- 
nates would have resigned immediately. As it was, Bethmann- 
Hollweg, holding his office not by parliamentary majorities 
but by the good favor of the Kaiser and the military, smiled 
blandly and continued with the next items on the government 
program. Only the socialists were bold enough to insist 
that he should quit office. The " National Liberals" and the 
1 * Centrum, ' ' although they had voted for the censure, were un- 
willing to force the issue. The Reichstag had simply expressed 
the opinion of a pretentious, officially recognized debating club. 

Nevertheless the incident had sent panic through the junkers 
and the princely gentlemen in the Potsdam palaces. Doubt- 
less they cursed von Forstner and von Reuter roundly in 
private as "blockheads" and "asses" even while they publicly 
defended them. The rift between the civilians and the mili- 
tary had been advertised too clearly. If the Reichstag fac- 
tions had been a little bolder, had really dared to hold up es- 
sential legislation in order to force Bethmann-Hollweg out, 
then one of three things must have happened: — (I) The 
Chancellor must have resigned and been replaced by a man 
agreeable to the majority of the Reichstag. This would pos- 
sibly have been the substitution of a liberal parliamentary sys- 
tem for Bismarckism: (II) The Kaiser must have dissolved 
the Reichstag and ordered a new election : but in the inflamed 
state of public opinion it was likely that a new Reichstag 
would be more radical and less pliable than the old one: 
(III) The government must have collected taxes and paid 
out money without the Reichstag's authorization, but this 
would have been a wanton violation of even the circumscribed 
privileges granted by the Hohenzollern regime. It would 
have been revolutionary and probably would have provoked 
a counter-revolution. 



222 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The Zabern incident, in other words, taught the junkers, 
the Pan-German propagandists, and their allies the great 
manufacturers who were clutching at world trade, that 
despite the great material prosperity they had brought the 
Empire, despite the careful drilling of public opinion their 
position was getting precarious. It doubtless had its effect 
upon their august personal head, the God-crowned Emperor 
and King. Its whole effect surely was to get them all to 
quicken their efforts, already promising fearful success, to 
ease the home situation by a foreign war. 

However, even without the affair at Zabern, the attitude 
of Germany in foreign affairs was no longer that of Bis- 
marck's "satiated" state, seeking only for inward develop- 
ment and peace. She was building a great navy, she was in- 
creasing her already mighty army, she was reaching out hun- 
grily for colonies, she was giving foreign statesmen anxious 
nights when they brooded on her aggressive policy. A great 
host of skillful pamphleteers and propagandists was carrying 
out to the nation the peace-destro}ang gospel that Germany 
needed new opportunities for riches, power and expansion and 
that all these good things could he wisely and speedily won by 
the sword. As for William II, a diplomat who saw him often 
just before the debacle, gives this summary of his probable 
attitude: "He must have said to himself then that the 
first part of his task was over, and the second about to begin. 
He had launched his people upon a career of prosperity and 
progress in which it could no longer cry halt, and a new war, 
so far from checking this marvelous economic advance, would 
only act as a fresh stimulus. Germany, having trebled her 
commerce and almost doubled her population, with millions 
of workers who no longer left their country to seek a living 
elsewhere, needed new fields for expansion, and thirsted for 
an unquestioned supremacy in every sphere. It would be the 
glory of William, while still in the full vigor of his years, to 
realize these splendid ambitions. ' ' x 

i Baron Beyens, "Germany Before the War," p, 29. Beyens was Bel- 
gian minister to Berlin in 1914. Despite the wrongs done to his country 
he writes with moderation and relative lack of prejudice, as well as 



THE NEW CAPTAIN OF GERMANY 223 

On November 22nd, 1913, at the time the Zabern "incident" 
was at its height, Jules Cambon, Ambassador for France at 
Berlin, sent a confidential communication to his government. 
He reported how a fortnight earlier King Albert of Belgium 
had visited Potsdam and had been at a banquet with the 
Emperor and General von Moltke, 1 the chief of staff. The 
King was grievously distressed at the tone of the conversa- 
tion, over the walnuts and wine. War seemed in the air. 
The Emperor's influence was no longer exerted, as "on so 
many critical occasions, in support of peace." The General 
talked even more openly of how "war was necessary and in- 
evitable/* By war of course was meant a great European war 
against a coalition of great powers. Jules Cambon, a sage 
diplomat, sent the report in to Paris with this solemn obser- 
vation : ' ' The Emperor is becoming used to an order of ideas 
[making for war] which were formerly repugnant to him, 
and, to borrow from him a phrase he likes to use, 'we must 
keep our powder dry' ! " 2 

The ambassador soon found justification for his warning. 

PRUSSIAN MILITARY COURTS AND DUELLING 

One of the prerogatives of German army officers is to be tried by 
their fellow officers and not suffer the indignity of making their de- 
fence before a tribunal of civilians. 

The 'honor," assumed to be inherent in each Prussian officer, com- 
pelled him to avenge every insult to his personal dignity, not by legal 
process, but by his good right arm. In altercations with his equals 
an officer was obliged to fight a duel if a "court of honor" (usually 
composed of his senior officers) decided that this was necessary to 
atone for the insult. The duel might be with heavy sabers (far more 
deadly than the student's weapon) or in extreme cases with pistols. 
Many Prussian military duels seem to have ended fatally. 

In deference to civilian protests there were certain regulations dis- 
couraging duelling, but they were never strictly enforced. It was said 

with much insight and sincere effort to understand the German side 
of the case. 

i Nephew of the famous Moltke who died in 1891. 

- French ' Diplomatic Correspondence respecting the War," document 
6. It is commonly supposed that Monsieur Cambon got his informa- 
tion about this imperial supper-party from King Albert himself or at 
least from Baron Beyens. 



224 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

that only the Emperor himself could stop duelling in the army, by a 
stern personal mandate — but this he was unwilling to issue. If a 
German officer was convicted of an offence, he would commonly be sen- 
tenced only to mild imprisonment in a "•fortress," a penalty that car- 
ried no social taint, and not have to commingle with the common herd 
in an ordinary prison. In the winter of 191G-17 a German military 
officer, having been convicted in this country of gross offences against 
the United States neutrality laws, is alleged to have demanded that 
America, no less than Germany, should let him serve out his term of 
confinement in some place more honorable and comfortable than the 
regular penitentiary provided for the run of base-born Yankee offenders. 
— The American court does not seem to have been able to comply with 
the worthy officer's wish. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE UNHAPPY FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 

GREAT and certain of a glorious history appeared the 
Empire of the Hohenzollerns in 1914, despite its conser- 
vative junkers in Prussia, its arrogant officer caste, its rapa- 
cious great capitalists, and its muttering, disruptive and im- 
practical socialists. Of course its statesmen were facing the 
usual number of problems in finance and social reform, com- 
mon to every civilized state. They were also holding at arm's 
length a very disagreeable demand for greater political 
liberties. Yet the material success of the Empire was so 
great, and so marked was the ability of the Hohenzollern 
dynasts to justify its power by the efficient government, 
physical well-being, economic expansion and national prestige 
which it had brought their subjects, that one could fairly 
say that the system which Bismarck had initiated in 1871 
seemed in little danger of serious modification forty-three 
years later. Intolerable blundering, gross oppression, un- 
successful wars, famines, general calamity — these are the 
things which usually provoke dangerous wrath and revolution 
within a nation, not theoretical claims for a better scheme 
of government ; and the German imperial system had suffered 
from none of these disasters. In 1914 it was confidently 
lauded by its champions as an unmitigated success, while the 
people committed to its fostering care were advancing 
economically from strength to strength. Even outside the 
Empire, in the democratic lands of France, England and 
America, it was regarded with a kind of bewildered ad- 
miration — this system that appeared such a contradiction to 
all the theories of democracies, and which nevertheless seemed 
more efficient than they. How much better were the Germans ' 
commercial methods than the English, or their army mobili- 

225 



226 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

zation schemes than the French, or their city governments 
than the American ! For the solution of almost every material 
public problem, Germany presented herself as the school- 
house of the world. A foreign community almost automat- 
ically sent "a commission to Germany," to learn its ap- 
proved methods, whether the question were that of establishing 
a municipal piggery or a college of music. 

Nevertheless there was certainly one matter in which the 
Fatherland gave no lessons to the rest of humanity. Along 
its northern, eastern, and western frontiers there were large 
and populous districts whereof the inhabitants were bitterly 
resentful of Berlin rule, and if a great war should break out 
they could by no means be relied upon to pray for German 
victory. 

It is a nice question for political theorists to settle when a 
barbarous or imperfectly civilized people has reached such a 
stage in its upward development that the tutelage of a civil- 
ized power should cease, and the subordinate people be left 
more or less to walk upon its own feet. All great nations, 
excluding Austria, but including America, had colonies in 
the tropics calling for considerable "administration" of the 
natives. But it is only a dealer in quiddities who claims that 
there is ordinarily the same resentfulness of outside political 
control in a Malay as in an Anglo-Saxon. In 1914 it was at 
least not supposed to be the proper thing for white men to 
deny large rights of self-government to other white men. It 
is true this theory was often imperfectly developed. In Aus- 
tria there was a regular complex of "minor races/' jangling 
with the predominant Germans and Magyars, and crying out 
lustily against real or alleged deeds of oppression. But Aus- 
tria was not a nation but a conglomerate. There could be no 
real hope, despite German and Magyar ambitions, of reducing 
all her peoples to one fixed type and mould. The friction 
between her races was only the inevitable heat engendered by 
the painful process of finding some system of federation which 
would be reasonably just and satisfactory to all parties. 
There was also the great fraction of Poland and the whole 
of Finland, grasped in the clutch of Russian Czardom, and 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 227 

often brutally threatened with violent " Russification. ' ' But 
this again was merely one phase of that whole outrageous sys- 
tem of "despotism tempered by inefficiency" that was paving 
the way for the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Poles and 
Finns suffered differently, but hardly more grievously than 
did all the liberal elements of native Russians who felt the 
heavy weight of Nicholas II 's blundering machine. Once 
more, there was the case of Ireland, which certainly had been 
sorely tormented by its British rulers in the past, and now 
was clamoring for deliverance. But British public opinion 
had already resolved on extending to Ireland every kind of 
good gift and favor, even to the point of almost complete 
self-government : the only real difficulty had been that 25 per 
cent, of Ireland (Ulster) had angrily refused the boon which 
the other 75 per cent, demanded, and threatened civil war if 
"home rule ' ' were thrust upon it. 1 None of these cases consti- 
tuted a serious refutation to the general proposition that no 
European nation had the right to oppress the people of another 
European nation. As for France and Italy, there were no 
dwellers in those countries who did not wish to be counted 
Frenchmen or Italians; although just over their respective 
borders there were less happy districts that would probably 
have been very glad to transfer their allegiance to Paris or 
Rome. But incorporated within the German Empire were 
no less than three populous areas, inhabited by civilized Euro- 
peans, who detested the German rule and wished heartily for 
some different political connection. The Berlin government 
had tried cajoling these people into becoming "good Ger- 
mans" — and it had failed. It had tried coercing them — it 
had still more completely failed. At least two of these na- 
tional groups were seemingly less loyal and happy in their 
relations to Germany in 1914 than they had been, let us say, 
in 1884. This was a very serious problem, for it affected the 
physical integrity of the Hohenzollerns ' Empire. The inabil- 

i In any case the Irish did not desire to be annexed to some outside, 
non-British power. Dublin may have hated the rule of London, but it 
did not wish to substitute that of Paris or Berlin. There is therefore 
no parallel between the case of Ireland and that e. g. of Alsace-Lorraine. 



228 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ity of the Kaiser's ministers to solve it was a proof that all 
the Prussian science, discipline, S3 r stem and efficiency could 
not meet very vital human questions. 

The three regions that looked angrily away from the rest 
of Germany were: I. Schleswig-Holstein : II. The Polish 
Provinces on the east: III. Alsace-Lorraine. It is best to 
begin with the first because it was the least important. 

In 1864 Prussia in alliance with Austria had taken from 
the King of Denmark the duchies of Schleswig-IIolstein, which 
had formerly been united by a kind of personal union with 
the Danish crown. In 1866 Bismarck, having defeated his 
late ally Austria in war, caused these countries to be annexed 
entirely to Prussia. Holstein had been an almost purely 
German land. Danish rule had not been popular. The re- 
gion soon settled down under its new government. But the 
case of Schleswig was very different. The population con- 
tained no less than 200,000 Danes occupying nearly all the 
northern sections of the province. They had not the least 
desire to become Germans and were proud of their northern 
language and robust type of civilization. In 1866, when 
after Sadowa Austria agreed to retire from all activity in 
German affairs, her statesmen had the grace to require that 
a clause be put in the treaty with Prussia specifically provid- 
ing that "the population of the northern district of Schleswig, 
when by a popular vote it shall have expressed its wish to be 
incorporated with Denmark, shall be surrendered to that 
country. ' ' 

This clause never remained more than a pious wish. There 
was strong feeling in Germany at the time that the forcible 
incorporation of the Danes was by no means advisable. "It 
would be a wise and statesmanlike act to renounce North 
Schleswig voluntarily," declared the Eolnische Z titling, one 
of the most influential papers in Prussia, in 1866. But Bis- 
marck seldom relaxed his grip on anything. In his speeches 
he said that the treaty must be fulfilled, but that the vote 
must only come after time enough had elapsed to make sure 
the Schleswigers really wanted to secede, and that their action 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 229 

was "independent and voluntary." But this happy time, 
when the region could be trusted to settle its own destinies, 
never arrived. In 1878 Austria and Germany were nego- 
tiating over Balkan issues, and Bismarck (for favors granted 
elsewhere) easily induced Franz Joseph's statesmen to "re- 
vise" this clause about Schleswig by formally declaring it 
' ' null and void. ' ' (Ausser Gilltigkeit gesetz. ) So the Schles- 
wigers were left to their Prussian masters. 

The Danes, as a people, had far more in common with their 
conquerors than the Poles and the Franco- Alsatians : and yet 
fifty years of most unhappy local history have demonstrated 
the inability of Prussian officialdom, with all its system and 
mechanical efficiency, to card-catalog and bring under control 
the soul of a people. The issue turned very largely around 
the use of the Danish language. Nearly twelve million Prus- 
sian subjects had spoken Low German, a form of speech al- 
most as different from the official and literary "High Ger- 
man" as was Danish, and no one had questioned their loyalty 
to Kaiser und Kdnig: but against Danish the Berlin ministers 
now set themselves as against a tongue of sedition. After 
various half measures, German was not merely introduced 
in 1889 into all the Schleswig schools, but it was forbidden 
to teach Danish under any circumstances whatever. No fam- 
ily could engage a Danish tutor, and even parents who under- 
took to teach Danish systematically to their children were 
liable to prosecution. Still another regulation forbade par- 
ents to send their children to school in Denmark. 

If government mandates from Berlin could have solved the 
Schleswig problem it would have vanished speedily. A min- 
isterial order commanded all school children in the region to 
learn by heart twenty songs from the official song book. Of 
these twelve were German national or war songs, and one of 
them was the famous Preussenlied, with its refrain "Ich bin 
ein Preusse." As for local history, schoolmasters were for- 
bidden to teach their charges anything of the annals of Den- 
mark, or even anything of those of Schleswig prior to 1864 
(the date of the conquest). Only strictly German history 
prior to that time could be taught, and that too in text-books 



230 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

wherein the rulers of Prussia were extolled as patriotic demi- 
gods whose sole end was the good of their people, and who 
had rescued poor Schleswig from the tyrannous clutches of 
Denmark. Where the text-book failed the school-master's rod 
theoretically completed the process. Children who spoke Dan- 
ish in the school or on its playground were subject to punish- 
ment. At Aabenraa foi* ?, time there was devised a system of 
fines for every Danish word a school-child uttered, but this 
proved unsatisfactory and a system of making the youthful 
malefactors "stay in" was substituted. Some of the tyrants 
of the birch became notorious, as e.g., the redoubtable Herr 
Blohm of Haderslev, a mighty school master of the eighties. 

By such means no doubt outward obedience was often 
maintained, but the stolid unbending northern farmers con- 
tinued proof against this type of petty persecution. They 
were without hope of rescue by weak Denmark, and the 
Prussian juggernaut might grind over them, suppress their 
papers, silence or banish their native pastors, flog their chil- 
dren, but it could not make them Prussians or make them 
wish to be Prussians. At election after election one or two 
Schleswig deputies would be returned to the Reichstag to 
uplift their voices vainly but bravely against this process of 
crushing out the habits and language of a liberty-loving, in- 
telligent people. And in 1905 by unimpeachable German sta- 
tistics there were 162,000 persons in Schleswig whom all the 
bullying and cajoling of the Berlin Ministry of Education 
could not induce to call themselves Germans but still were 
reckoned "Danes." The situation was hardly better in 1914. 
When the great war began, a district only a little north of the 
Kiel Canal and extending from the Baltic to the North Sea 
was held by people whom fifty years of Prussian occupation 
could not make ardent soldiers for the Kaiser. 1 

The Danish problem was bad: but after all the Schleswig 
malcontents reckoned barely 0.25 per cent, of the whole popu- 

i A prominent Schleswiger who emigrated to America thus expressed 
the feelings of his people, in an interview in the American press in 
1917: "I was born in Schleswig-Holstein and know what it means to 
lire under German iron rule. Every one who spoke a Danish word, 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 231 

lation of Germany. It was quite different with the Polish 
problem. On the eve of the Great War over 3,800,000 subjects 
of William II called themselves Poles instead of Prussians, 
and the question of their Germanization and loyalty was one 
of the weighty questions for the Fatherland. The third and 
last partition of Poland had taken place in 1795. In 1815 
there had been a redistribution of the divided land between 
the three spoilers, Prussia, Russia, and Austria, but no 
restoration of the Polish kingdom. The joint crime of Fred- 
erick the Great, Catherine of Russia and Maria Theresa 1 
and her descendants had never been punished. It is true 
that Poland had, during its independent days, been afflicted 
by one of the craziest and most unworkable systems of "gov- 
ernment" ever possessed by a so-called civilized country: an 
elective kingship with only nominal powers for the ruler and 
with an unlimited opportunity for lawless nobles to do that 
which was right in their own eyes. True again, the oppres- 
sions of the peasantry by their noble lords had been so great 
that when the foreign conquerors entered the land, the pa- 
triotic upper classes could not get enough support from the 
lower classes to make Kosciusko's last resistance more than 
brave but hopeless heroism. True likewise, that economic and 
agricultural conditions in independent Poland had been ut- 
terly primitive, as bad as in medieval Russia, — few towns, 
fewer roads, squalor, poverty and superstition everywhere. 
Nevertheless the forcible dismemberment of Poland late in 
the 18th century had been one of those great crimen 
against the justice of history that surely will return and 
plague the offending empires. It certainly returned to plague 
Prussia. 

sang a Danish song, or bought a cap with a Danish flag upon it was 
immediately arrested by the German authorities and expelled from the 
country without mercy. Therefore I came to America." 

Even allowing for prejudice and exaggeration, this is a pungent com- 
ment on the abilities of Prussia to deal with non-Prussians. 

i In fairness to Maria Theresa it should be said that the original plot 
to dismember Poland originated with her mighty "brother" and "sis- 
ter" and she entered only reluctantly upon their schemes for spoliation. 



232 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Shortly before 191-4 there were about 21,000,000 persons 
speaking Polish, and all of them willing candidates for citi- 
zenship in a revived Polish kingdom. Of these about 3,800,000 
were in Germany, 5,000,000 in Austria, and some 12,000,000 
in Russia. The Czar thus grasped the largest fraction of the 
unhappy race as well as Warsaw, its old capital. The Poles 
did not love their Russian masters. They were Catholics; 
the Russians were "Orthodox," and were not at all tender 
in the means whereby they propagated their type of Chris- 
tianity. The Czars, especially since the abortive revolution 
of 1863, had stamped out almost the last vestige of local 
liberty for the Poles, had exiled and imprisoned their leaders 
right and left, had induced Russian adventurers to settle in 
the land and given them office and preferment, had discour- 
aged the Polish language, — in short, had generally played the 
irresponsible tyrants. The condition of the Russian Poles 
was therefore bad. But it was not hopeless. They lay on 
the edge of Russia, and were only on paper an integral part 
thereof. Russian officialdom was often brutal, stupid and 
corrupt; but it was usually also inefficient.. It was a long 
way sometimes from publishing a Czar's ukase to enforcing 
its harsh details in a Polish village. 1 The better type of Rus- 
sian officials were more urbane, tactful and more complaisant 
than their companions just across the Prussian border. Above 
all, every intelligent Pole knew that the old regime in Russia 
could not last forever. When it went down, the Russian 
liberals could not belie themselves by refusing decent justice 
to Poland. The Russian fraction of the Poles therefore often 
lived most uncomfortably, but they lived in hope. 

Likewise the Austrian Poles had their consolations. They 
were subject indeed to the government at Vienna. But in the 
distracted Dual Monarchy, where every possible helper was 
needed to aid the Germans and Magyars to hold their own 
against the jealous lesser peoples, the Poles were able to get 
a good price for a steady support of Franz Josef's ministers. 

i The very corruptibility of many Ru-sian imperial officials mr.de it 
possible often to abate the workings of the severest mandates by a little 
well placed bribe-money. 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 233 

In return for the pro-German votes of their deputies at Vienna, 
they were able to extract local liberties, and the free use of 
their language in education, etc., to an extent never enjoyed 
by the other two fractions of their race. For the time they 
submitted to Austria fairly cheerfully. They knew that the 
Hapsburg monarchy was an utterly artificial consolidation. 
At any moment it might transform itself and leave them their 
freedom. Till then they were respected in their language, 
religion and institutions. No thoroughgoing attempts were 
made to render them ' ' Germans. ' ' They also could bide their 
time. 

But the hopes of the Prussian Poles were much less certain, 
and their present lot much more bitter. After all, Russian 
and Pole had one great common tie — they were both Slavs. 
Austrian and Pole at least shared the common lot of being 
Catholics. Prussian and Pole found themselves opposed 
alike as Protestant against Catholic, and Teuton against Slav. 
The religious chasm was in any case serious. Before the par- 
tition the Poles had not always been extremely zealous Cath- 
olics. In the 16th century a large fraction of the nation had 
seemed about to become Presbyterian, although the old religion 
had presently regained the upper hand. But now the mere 
fact that their Prussian masters represented an extremely 
conservative and aggressive type of Protestantism made the 
Poles cling to their religion both as a matter of patriotism 
and of faith. Deprived of their own governors and kings 
they rallied around their priests and archbishops as the vis- 
ible heads of the nation. This of course aroused the religious 
ire of the Protestants. In 1914 the eastern provinces of Kaiser 
Wilhelm were one of the few places in the civilized world 
where the old religious feuds which had once everywhere ar- 
rayed Christian against Christian still burned hot, and in- 
truded into politics. There was no hope of stilling the issue, 
because it had become one of race loyalty. 

Yet down to 1870 the Polish subjects of Prussia had not 
seemed so very unhappy. In the abortive Frankfort Parlia- 
ment of 1848, which ought to have given a free constitution 
tu Germany, it was argued that the real interests of the Ger- 



234 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

man people required that Poland should be restored. The 
poet Herwegh declaimed then in favor of a war against Rus- 
sia in behalf of oppressed Poland, crying out that "there 
could be no free Germany without a free Poland, and no free 
Poland without a free Germany ! ' ' All these chivalrous 
projects failed, of course, with the failure of the Frankfort 
parliament: but in 1866 and 1870 the Poles of the Prussian 
provinces fought bravely for William I and did nothing to 
hamper his government during its times of sore ordeal. It 
was after 1871, when the Empire was consolidating, when the 
official bureaucracy was completing its systematizing and reg- 
ulating of every practice and every individual in the realm, 
that the Poles first realized the full weight of the task-master. 

In truth the Prussians, for their part, were becoming some- 
what alarmed at the situation upon their whole eastern fron- 
tier and especially in the important province of Posen. For 
example, in 1886 it was discovered that in the preceding 
twenty-five years the Poles there had increased by two hun- 
dred thousand and the Germans by only four thousand. The 
Prussian government had imagined that contact with the su- 
perior Kultur of its native citizens, the introduction of Ger- 
man peasants into Polish communities and the like would 
produce a gradual Teutonization of these "Eastern Marches." 
Precisely the reverse happened. The German peasant had 
many robust virtues, but he often succumbed rapidly to the 
local influences, good or bad, of any new home assigned him. 
In the present case the government awoke to the fact that 
the German settlers were becoming Poles. In 1886 there were 
759 children with German names in the primary schools of 
Posen in whose families nothing but Polish was spoken. The 
Poles were exceedingly prolific and easily distanced the Ger- 
mans in the size of their households. "They multiply like 
rabbits ! ' ' angrily cried one Prussian statesman. In short, in 
this year 1886 the situation seemed so menacing that Bismarck 
and his associates decided on radical remedies. 

The Iron Chancellor set himself like flint against any propo- 
sition to restore Polish independence. "Any arrangement," 
he wrote, "likely to satisfy Poland is impossible without the 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 235 

breaking up and decomposing of Prussia." The proposed 
remedy was therefore to gradually grind down and Germanize 
the Poles by a wholesale introduction of Teutonic colonists 
for whom lands were to be provided by the public exchequer. 
A land commission was set up. Small farms were to be pur- 
chased and parceled out to German colonists on extremely 
convenient terms. It was relatively easy for Bismarck to get 
his scheme for an eastern land commission and a liberal 
appropriation through the Prussian parliament. It was en- 
tirely another matter actually to get the land itself. The 
Poles, who had hitherto been somewhat dormant in their pa- 
triotism, now rallied generally to meet the common danger. 
Against the government subsidies and grants they pitted 
their private loan and self-help societies and banks, in which 
great Slavic noblemen invested liberally, to enable their peas- 
antry to hold their own. The Pole who sold land to the Prus- 
sian land commission had to face the anathema of the parish 
priest and the boycott of all his neighbors. What land the 
commission could buy usually came from great German estate 
holders in the region who, getting anxious and disgusted at 
the situation, were glad to sell out and move away. The 
Polish private land societies took advantage of this condition 
to buy German land themselves in districts next to their own. 
thus extending the holdings of the Polish peasants. Only 
about 30 per cent, of the land the government commission was 
able to purchase came from Poles : the rest came from Ger- 
mans — it had been robbing Peter to pay Paul! In 1911 i1 
was estimated that the whole result of this competition up tc 
date had been the net gain by the Poles of some 240,000 acres 
which had enjoyed German ownership prior to 1896 or earlier 
The struggle was intensified in 1902 when Chancellor 
von Billow introduced a bill in Prussia to give teeth to the 
powers of the land commission, by the compulsory expropria 
tion of the lands of the Polish peasants. The results, how 
ver, were still unsatisfactory. Even Prussian officialdom 
could not coerce German farmers to quit comfortable estate* 
elsewhere in the Empire and settle in a land where they wer< 
at sword's points with all their neighbors, were without con 



236 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

genial associates and sometimes needed police protection 
The Polish villagers clung in desperation to their traits and 
their language, and their unwelcome guests had perforce to 
assimilate themselves to have the least companionship. While 
Bethmann-Hollweg was Prussian Minister of the Interior he 
visited one of the new "colonies" and asked a German settler, 
"How do you like your new home?" "All right," came the 
answer, "except that we cannot yet understand the Poles 
well enough. But" (reassuringly) "never mind, we shall 
learn Polish yet!" 

Against this tenacious use of their native vernacular, the 
Prussian regime fought with the same soldiery it had mobil- 
ized in Schleswig — the school-masters. Up to 1872 Polish 
studies had not been entirely taboo in the annexed provinces, 
but in that year German was made the sole language in the 
elementary schools, save only that instruction in "religion" 1 
was at first permitted, at least in the lower grades, in the 
native vernacular. But speedily even this privilege began to 
be curtailed. As fast as children learned enough German 
in the lower grade secular studies they were transferred to 
the German "religion classes." Inasmuch as religion and 
national patriotism, to a Polish mind, were closely intertwined, 
this measure was calculated to produce the maximum of re- 
sentment. The clergy sided with the people against requir- 
ing the children "to learn the sacred religion in the hateful 
German language." It was branded as merely a clumsy at- 
tempt to inculcate Protestantism. The lot of the German- 
speaking priest commissioned to teach the most precise kind 
of Catholicism, but in the hated tongue, was no happy one. 
His authority was constantly defied in every possible manner. 

At last in 1906 came the famous school -strike. In over 
1000 schools in Posen and West Prussia some 60,000 scholars, 
under instructions from their parents, refused to answer ques- 
tions in German on the catechism or to learn German hymns. 
The Polish press and clergy egged them on and applauded. 
The enforced use of German was styled "a sinful desecration 

i That is, of course, the rudiments of the Catholic faith taught by a 
priest, albeit under government license and supervision. 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 237 

of the Catholic religion" and "a tyranny over the conscience 
in which only the devil in the gorge of hell and the Prussian 
government could find satisfaction." The children, under 
such pious urgings, greeted their unlucky "religious teacher" 
with Polish songs and execrations, or strewed the roadside 
with fragments of their German catechisms. The Prussian 
government of course retaliated by every means in its power. 
Children who proved non-pliable were "kept back" and re- 
fused promotion. Parents who encouraged them openly were 
fined: if they took them away from school outright the par- 
ents were sent to prison. But as a most effective measure of 
all the government appointed additional teachers to the staffs 
in malcontent villages. The salaries of these extra instructors 
of course fell directly on the little communities. These in- 
creased taxes broke the back of the mutiny. By Easter, 1907, 
it was ended — but leaving a heritage of hatred in all the Poles 
of the rising generation. It was a decidedly Pyrrhic victory 
for Prussia. 1 

Of course the details in this long story of friction between 
two races, one superior and hectoring, the other very angrily 
on the defensive, concern only strictly local history. The 
Poles fought tooth and nail against the discouragement of 
their language. The Prussian police retaliated by suppressing 
all kinds of Polish open-air meetings and keeping every in- 
door meeting under strict surveillance ; by frequently forbid- 
ding Polish theatrical performances; by refusing to allow 
Poles to plead their cases in the courts in their mother tongue, 
even in districts where this had been the language for a mil- 
lenium ; and by actually trying to give a Germanized form 
to Polish family names whenever they had to be officially 
recorded. Of course no genuine Pole was welcome in the 
German civil or military service. The judgeships, the postal 
service, the great body of railway officials, all the other thou- 
sand and one positions which drew the government pay were 
closed to them. A few great nobles indeed had made their 
peace with Prussia and won high positions in the diplomatic 

i For an interesting description of this "strike" see E. H. Fife, "The 
German Empire between two Wars," pp. 258-59. 



238 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

service: but they were considered almost apostates to their 
own people. The Poles in their turn remained a separate 
political party, returning twelve members to the Prussian 
Parliament (Landtag) in 1913 and increasing the number 
of small irresponsible, discontented factions which were the 
curse of German public life. 

Under the stress of Prussian coercion the German fraction 
of the Poles had come together as a people as they had never 
done in the days of their turbulent independence. The peas- 
antry, who had seen their nation die without any worthy 
effort to help their nobility to save her, were in 1914 joining 
secret societies and giving ear to a propaganda which spelled 
nothing but trouble for their century-long masters. A few 
years before the outbreak of the great war, the vigilant Prus- 
sian police had seized a vernacular prayer-book circulated 
among the Polish laborers who had been induced to work in 
the coal mines of Westphalia. Some of the invocations were 
these : 

Mother of God, Queen of the Poles, save Poland ! . . . 

From the Muscovite and Prussian bondage free us, Lord ! 

By the Martyrdom of the soldiers murdered by the Prussians at 

Fisehau, free us, Lord! 
For death on the battlefield we beseech thee, Lord ! 
For the re-possession of the Polish Fatherland, we beseech thee, 

Lord! 
For an early universal call "To arms," we beseech thee, Lord! 

And yet Poland had been officially declared dead and buried 
in 1796. 

It was clear that here at least German science had been 
unable to accomplish what Americans have styled the "benev- 
olent assimilation" of a fraction of a people, which, whatever 
its undoubted faults, was gallant, talented, artistic and under 
right conditions worthy of the best. 

It was no favorable commentary on the achievements of 
Bismarck and his successors that in 1914, when for obvious 
reasons both Russia and Germany were bidding for Polish 
support, the best wishes of the Poles, whatever their masters, 
seemed to go with the blundering autocracy of Nicholas II. 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 239 

The Polish, problem, therefore, was much like the Schleswig 
problem only larger, more bitter and much more dangerous. 
But still more dangerous was that of Alsace-Lorraine. Schles- 
wig had only a very weak country to sympathize with its trou- 
bles and to dream of its rescue. Prussian Poland had no 
friend among the independent nations at all, all its brethren 
were in other houses of bondage: but Alsace-Lorraine had a 
mighty friend, close at hand, who never let the story of its 
troubles sleep. 

Gambetta had adjured his French countrymen, concerning 
the loss of the two provinces, ''Think of it often, speak of 
it never !" But an injunction to such heroic silence was not 
always obeyed by a great but sometimes voluble nation. 
Every 14th of July, the "Bastile" national holiday, a solemn 
procession moved through Paris to place a wreath of mourning 
on the statue personifying the genius of Strassburg. 
The remembrance of the disaster of 1870-71 was kept alive 
by every veteran of Sedan and of the great siege. It was 
hard sometimes for responsible statesmen to keep expressions 
of national resentment within bounds and to prevent a serious 
affront to Germany : for French military men knew perfectly 
well the excellence of the Kaiser's war-machine and that in 
any new duel in which France fought without allies her cause 
might seem good but her case would be desperate. As time 
went on, as material prosperity returned to France, as a new 
generation with new interests arose, the memory of the orig- 
inal loss did indeed become a little less keen. Indeed shortly 
before 1914 there were those who argued that sensible French- 
men realized that the lost provinces were lost forever, and had 
only an academic interest in their problems. However, the 
instant war was declared that year, it was plain as day that 
the Alsace-Lorraine question was one of the very first issues 
in the Great Debate. 

Possibly if the lost provinces had seemed reasonably con- 
tented and happy under their new rulers, Frenchmen would 
not have been reminded of their disaster so often. But to 
provide tactful masters did not lie in the German genius. 



240 THE ROOTS OF THE "WAR 

In 1914 Alsace-Lorraine was barely if any more reconciled to 
its fate, than in 1871, when the tearful deputies of the two 
regions quitted the despairing National Assembly at Bordeaux 
which had voted them away. The poet Schiller, whose pre- 
cepts have been called oracles by his countrymen, once as- 
serted, "The noblest sign of culture (Bildung) is respect for 
other peoples' liberty." Such a sign of culture was never 
given by Prussian Kultur. 

Of course the annexation was a direct act of physical vio- 
lence by the victor. Bismarck, as has been explained (p. 20), 
had hesitated about taking all the land which Von Moltke and 
the military camarilla demanded. "As you see, we are keep- 
ing Metz," he told an English journalist, "but I confess I 
do not like that part of the arrangement. Strassburg is Ger- 
man in speech, and will be so in heart ten years hence. Metz, 
however, is French, and will be a hot-bed of disaffection for 
a long time to come." 1 Bismarck was right about Metz. He 
was grievously wrong about Strassburg. In 1914 the Ger- 
mans had to take almost as many precautions against sedition 
in one city as the other. 

The German conquerors realized, of course, that at the out- 
set they would be unpopular, but their hearts teemed with 
good intentions towards the unlucky folk who centuries be- 
fore had been German and had been weaned away from their 
loyalty by the specious, superficial Gauls, but who now were 
returning to their own kindred and their best traditions. Bis- 
marck assured the Reichstag in 1871, "I feel myself called 
to be the advocate [of the annexed people] in the new state 
they are entering": and von Sybel, the court historian, an- 
nounced his certainty that his new fellow burghers of the 
Empire would soon feel the blessedness of their change. 
"They will have lighter taxes," he wrote, "greater religious 
freedom, and in the army will meet the sons of the educated 
classes." 2 

i "Conversations with Prince Bismarck," collected by Von Poschinger, 
English Translation, p. 86. 

2 A sneer at conditions in the French army which seems to have been 
without the slightest justification. 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 241 

Unfortunately the conquerors had never learned the sage 
proverb : ' ' The more haste, the less speed. ' ' If loyal sub- 
jects of the Kaiser could have been made by ministerial edicts 
from Berlin, the Alsatians would have been instantly con- 
tented and happy: but they were not Brandenburgers. Their 
lands had been trampled over by invading armies : their homes 
had often been desolated: Strassburg had been ruthlessly 
bombarded : while up and down the whole land they were still 
mourning their dead. On the 30th of September, 1872, the 
new government, however, enforced its edict compelling all 
the people to decide whether they wished to be Germans or 
Frenchmen. If Germans they must submit to the new regime. 
If Frenchmen they must prepare speedily to quit the land 
of their fathers wherein they were now counted as alien inter- 
lopers. As a result, at the very least 45,000 persons (in the 
main among the most intelligent and promising young men 
in the land) deliberately took the sorrowful road to exile. 
In 1914 these men, gray-headed now, were to see visions, 
dream dreams, and say moving things to the soldiers of 
France. Almost simultaneously the teaching of the French 
language in elementary schools was forbidden. In the city 
of Strassburg, where the Marseillaise had first been flung 
upon the air, it was prohibited to learn its language, save as a 
"foreign tongue" for advanced pupils, like English, Italian 
and Russian. Under French occupation a certain mongrel 
type of German had always been spoken in the Alsatian vil- 
lages. 1 The French had never troubled about this. It had 
not prevented the Alsatians from being zealous patriots. 
Now, by a natural reaction, many a Teuton-speaking Alsa- 
tian prided himself on chattering also a little bad French. 

But what drove the annexed population to peculiar wrath, 
was the almost instant enforcement of the German military 
conscription. Their slain brethren in the French uniform 
were hardly cold and buried before the youth of the two 
provinces were commanded to don the spiked helmet and fol- 
low the Prussian drill-sergeant. Vain were protests. In 

i This was true especially in Alsace. Lorraine had been pretty 
strictly French in speech as well as in sympathies, 



242 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

1871 a deputation of citizens went up to Berlin to expostulate. 
Bismarck told them brusquely, ''Prussia had an immense ex- 
perience of the results produced by wearing the Prussian 
uniform. Get the King's coat on a man's back and let him 
wear it for three years, and you have made not only a good 
soldier but a good 'burgher' [for Germany] out of him." 
"Yes," retorted Klein, leader of the deputation, "but you 
must get the coat on first and that is what you can never do !" 
Twelve thousand Alsatian young men at that time tied from 
their homeland merely to escape the kaiser's livery, and en- 
tered the French army. The rest submitted outwardly, but 
with a sullen spirit that made them of most dubious value as 
soldiers. The new regime might introduce an admirable legal 
system and build many new railroads, — all this counted for 
nothing beside the tyranny of the drill-master. 

The conquerors had in fact adopted a relentless policy of 
11 thorough," and held to it with native tenacity. Under the 
French regime, whatever the Paris government, the Alsatians 
had enjoyed pretty complete local autonomy. The French 
prefect had usually been a lax, good-natured functionary, 
only meddling in serious cases. The government had no 
doubt been haphazard, unscientific, somewhat inefficient — and 
popular. Now everything was changed. A swarm of officials 
with all the Prussian characteristics, plus even greater rigidity 
— thanks to feeling themselves on the defensive and to being 
charged with the propagation of Kultur — was turned loose 
on the land with autocratic powers. Down to 1879 the two 
provinces were ruled practically by a military dictator sent 
from Berlin. In that year an attempt was made to set up a 
simulacrum of constitutional rule. The provinces were hence- 
forth to be a "Reichsland," a dominion held by all the Em- 
pire in common, not by Prussia merely, but with the Kaiser 
appointing the governor-general and otherwise exercising 
pretty complete sway. There was to be a local elective diet 
and other forms of political "freedom," but the powers of 
the governor-general and his council (appointed by the crown) 
were such that the voters could do little more than register 
public protests by their ballots at one governmental act after 



FKONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 243 

another. The Berlin rulers did indeed make a serious attempt 
to conciliate local opinion by sending down for once a really 
humane and enlightened governor, Baron von Manteuffel. 
His intentions were good, and he tried sincerely to let the 
Alsatians preserve their self-respect. " I do not ask for your 
sympathy," he declared, "but I advise you to look on the 
union of Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire as defini- 
tive." 

Von Manteuffel won the personal good will of the people 
he was sent to govern. But his very condescension raised 
against him enemies at home. He was accused by his fellow 
Germans of "negotiating with the enemy" because he adopted 
mild measures; and the horde of lesser officials who had 
swarmed into the new province, greedy adventurers ("carpet- 
baggers" Americans would call them), anxious only to seize 
on every public post, tyrannize and grow fat, denounced him 
as little better than a traitor. In 1887 he died. The Alsa- 
tians mourned him, but he had not convinced them their new 
masters were anything but despots. At many an election the 
deputies Alsace-Lorraine sent up to the Reichstag were vio- 
lent "protesters" against the new regime, and the friction 
grew rather than diminished. It was under Manteuffel that 
the Bishop of Metz was awarded the Prussian Order of the 
Crown, which he repaid by expressing his regret at this un- 
welcome honor in a public letter to the governor. 

When Manteuffel died, the small-fry officials felt that their 
time was come. Kindness had failed; "proper severity" 
should now teach these returned but ungrateful sons of the 
Fatherland, the provincials, to appreciate their blessings. 
What happened soon after is thus summed up by Paul 
Hymans, a native Alsatian, — born in 1874 after the annexa- 
tion, and witness to many things. "Within a few months 
Alsace was subjected to every kind of German brutality. 
Deputies were expelled and Alsatian societies were dissolved. 
Political prosecutions took place on every side, for offenses 
such as seditious cries or emblems, membership in the * League 
of Patriots,' high treason, etc. To guard the Alsatians 
against 'intimidation' by their French relatives, intercourse 



244 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

with persons beyond the frontier was made impossible by a 
regulation prescribing the use of passports." There was 
even a report that Bismarck wished there would be an insur- 
rection in the hope of crushing disaffection once for all in 
blood. 

The natives were too wise for such folly. They offered the 
passive resistance which is always so exasperating to a gov- 
ernment which demands inward submission as well as external 
obedience. Of course all important government offices were 
retained by Germans from across the Rhine. Emigrants were 
sent in from Prussia to take the farms of the exiles who had 
gone to France, just as other colonists had been sent into the 
Polish lands. The newcomers naturally were treated as 
pariahs by the natives. Their social relations were miser- 
able. A Prussian came to Alsace as a stationmaster. Be- 
ing a domestic soul he desired a wife; no Alsatian girl would 
marry him. He was obliged to send to Berlin for a consort 
to share his home and responsibilities. In all about 300,000 
Germans thus settled in the Reichsland; but they remained 
a mere army of occupation among the 1.550,000 odd natives 
who longed to see them go. They were only so many untact- 
ful provocatives to friction and a new disloyalty. 

After William II had ousted Bismarck, there was a partial 
relaxation of the worst of the regime of petty officials that had 
followed Manteuffel. William, however, by his speeches gave 
small encouragement to the hopes of the Alsatians for a revo- 
cation of the deed of 1871. "We would rather," said he in an 
oration, "sacrifice our eighteen army corps and our 42.000,000 
inhabitants on the field of battle than surrender a single stone 
my father and [his generals] . . . have gained." 

A new generation was growing up in Alsace-Lorraine : 
young men and women to whom French days were a story 
for their elders, but the new generation was not being won 
for the German regime. Unfortunately for their loyalty the 
Alsatians as a race had a keen sense of humor. It was not 
always possible for them to take their Prussian preceptors 
with sufficient seriousness. In 1895 occurred a typical inci- 
dent at Detwiller, a village near Zabern. A certain peasant 






FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 245 

had a fine white cock with a lordly red crest. The owner 
most treasonably dyed the bird's tail blue — making him the 
veritable emblem and colors of France. This overt act was 
promptly denounced by the emperor's loyal police. They 
ordered the peasant to slaughter his sedition-teaching fowl. 
The man refused. The police saber then avenged the out- 
raged fatherland : and so the feathered traitor perished. The 
Paris papers made merry over the tale: and diplomats more 
gravely observed that the incident had completely effaced all 
the efforts of the Kaiser to cultivate "good relations" with 
France at the opening of the Kiel Canal and the visit there of 
some French warships. 1 

From the beginning of the third emperor's reign down to 
the eve of the great conflict matters did not better them- 
selves. Sometimes it was a case of petty persecution, some- 
times of grievous invasion of ordinary human rights. The 
police played a kind of game with the French press of the 
two provinces, suppressing it on every pretext possible. By 
passport regulations they did their uttermost to prevent 
Frenchmen from visiting Alsace and Alsatians from visiting 
France. "When a historical drama was offered in Strassburg 
which required a display of the tricolor in one scene, the gov- 
ernment forbade the use of the offending banner and then 
comically compromised the issue by allowing the use of the 
Dutch flag, wherein the red, white and blue strips run horizon- 
tally instead of vertically. The great Sarah Bernhardt was 
invited to play in Strassburg. The government refused her 
license to appear unless she would bury her memories of 1870 
and appear in Berlin likewise. The famous actress haughtily 

i German self-seriousness and lack of humor produced weird results 
sometimes in Alsace. A German Protestant clergyman visited an Al- 
satian pastor's family. He tried hard to persuade his clerical friend 
to speak German in his household. The other replied that "his wife 
insisted on speaking French." The visiting cleric vainly argued that 
it was weak and cowardly to be thus dominated by a woman. Finding 
his efforts unsuccessful, he sent his friend a treatise "On the Biological 
Imbecility of Woman" ("Uber den biologischen-Schwachsinn des 
Weibes" ) . The Pan-German congress, to which he formally reported 
this deplorable case of demi-treason, duly applauded his patriotic en- 
deavors. 



216 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

consented, for she had set her heart on meeting an Alsatian 
audience, but after her enforced performance in Berlin she 
revenged herself by using her enormous influence to create 
disgust for Germany, not merely in France, but in many other 
lands, notably in America. 

Finally in 1911 the German authorities conferred on their 
Reichsiand a moderately complete autonomy with a real local 
constitution, putting it somewhat on a par with the other 
German states, although the governor-general was still sent 
down from Berlin and there were other unpleasant evidences 
of servitude. This long-delayed benevolence produced no 
lucky results. The newly elected "Landtag" promptly 
showed its disaffection by cutting down the governor-gen- 
eral's salary, and refusing to vote the annual allowance for 
the Emperor's hunting trips to Alsace, when he had deigned 
to chaise a few stags and flush some partridges in the game 
preserves of this part of his dominions. The Prussians 
promptly retaliated in 1912 by canceling the orders for lo- 
comotives for their state railways which had been given to an 
Alsatian concern. That same year the ''All-Highest" visited 
Strassburg and flung his imperial warning at the Mayor. 
"Listen! L"p to now you have only known the good side of 
me ; you might be able to learn the other side of me. Things 
cannot continue as they are : if this situation lasts, we will 
suppress your Constitution and annex you to Prussia!" 

The Social Democrats all over the empire of course danced 
with glee at this threat. Their spokesman in the Reichstag 
declared that here was a confession, on the very highest 
authority, ' ; that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punish- 
ment one can threaten to impose upon a people for resistance 
against Germany. It is punishment like hard labor in the 
penitentiary, with loss of civil rights!" The Landtag, how- 
ever, was not suitably intimidated. It answered the Kaiser 
by two resolutions: (1) that their new constitution was not 
to be altered save by the will of the Alsatians themselves; (2) 
that the Reichsiand should have a national flag. Neither of 
these suggestions of course was acceptable at Berlin, and so 
the stress continued. 



FRONTIER LANDS OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS 247 

In 1913 came the notorious Zabern incident (see p. 219), 
which served formal notice on all the world that the German 
civilian was under the heel of the German militarist. This 
was peculiarly exasperating and outrageous to Alsace because 
the specific acts of tyranny took place within its borders, and 
the brutality of the officers was probably accentuated because 
the perpetrators suspected their victims were French sympa- 
thizers. In that same year the situation became so bad that 
Alsatian conscripts who had lately, as a special favor, been 
allowed to render their army service near their home towns 
as were the rest of their fellow citizens, were now ordered to 
perform their terms in the army at a distance from their 
native state. 1 

Nineteen hundred and fourteen saw increased friction, with 
the poet-artist Jacob Waltz, one of the most distinguished lit- 
erary men in Alsace, under prosecution for treason because of 
satires upon the German administration in the form of books 
for children. For this crime he was tried before the Imperial 
Supreme Court at Leipzig, acquitted on the more serious 
charge, but sentenced to one year's imprisonment "for insult- 
ing the police and inciting to disorder." He fled to France, 
and very soon thereafter the Great War began, at the out- 
break of which several prominent Alsatians either escaped over 
the border, or were imprisoned for the attempt. 

When the European conflict commenced it was clear enough 
that the German attempt to assimilate Alsace had failed ut- 
terly. "In Alsace-Lorraine we are in an enemy's country," 
a Prussian statesman is quoted as saying: and the Kaiser's 
forces were sent through the country with a healthy anxiety 
lest the first defeat make the whole region blaze up in revolt 
behind them. Many of the "needful severities" the Germans 
inflicted on Belgium were explained as being absolutely un- 
avoidable, because the experience of Alsace-Lorraine had dem- 
onstrated that a policy of "leniency" was useless for a con- 

i During three sojourns in Germany the author of this chapter was 
assured that the Alsatian conscripts could not be trusted in battle on 
the Western front. In 1914 I understand they were actually mobilized 
against Russia. 



248 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

quered population. The fact of course was, as an American 
writer has well put it, that "begotten as the Prussian system 
had been under conditions where iron discipline was a 
requisite for success, thoroughly convinced of its own ef- 
ficiency, it knew no law but that of force, and failed in those 
peaceful contests where victory must be won by conciliation." x 

However, the issue of the lost provinces had still larger 
bearings, important for all the world. A calm-minded 
Frenchman stated the issue as seen by his nation thus: "It 
is produced by an irreconcilable opposition between two con- 
flicting conceptions of right; sovereignty of government by 
right of conquest — the principle of the German monarchy; 
sovereignty of the people, whence arises the right of every 
population to determine its nationality — the principle of 
French democracy." 2 

In 1884 the "International Peace League/' oiie of those 
multifarious and pathetically ineffective peace societies which 
were covering the earth, met at Geneva and passed this reso- 
lution: "The conquest and forcible annexation of Alsace- 
Lorraine constitutes the chief obstacle to [lasting] peace, and 
the true cause of the enormous armaments." This statement 
was still true with only a slight exaggeration in 1914. If 
Germany had been sure of the loyalty of her Reichsland and 
on reasonably good terms with France, Armageddon could 
hardly have come to pass as it actually did. 

i Fife, "The German Empire between Two Wars," p. 227. Professor 
Fife, writing in 1916, while America was still neutral, makes a pecul- 
iarly fortunate attempt to interpret German conditions with penetration 
and perfect fairness. 

2 Seignobos, "Europe since 1814": (English Edit.) p. 831. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE BALKAN KINGDOMS AND THEIR REVOLUTIONS 

AFTER the ink had dried on the signatures to the Treaty 
of Berlin, the several diplomats of the great powers went 
home, England and Russia disarmed, the world breathed 
easier and the chart-makers prepared a new map for the 
Balkans. Roumania and Serbia speedily signalized their new 
independence by causing their rulers to be proclaimed 
' ' kings ' ' : but Nicholas of Montenegro contented himself with 
the more modest status of "prince" for some decades longer. 
For quite a while none of these countries had more than occa- 
sional mention in the western newspapers, although Monte- 
negro had much friction with Turkey before she secured the 
boundaries assigned her by the Berlin settlement. Ru- 
mania's problems were mainly those of internal development, 
save for a standing difficulty with Bulgaria over the unsatis- 
factory frontier given Rumania in the Dobrudja. Serbia 
watched the appearance of a Christian neighbor on her eastern 
flank with ill-disguised concern. She had expected to be the 
reversionary heir to a large part of the Balkans as the Otto- 
mans perished — and lo! here was Bulgaria, a certain rival 
crowding up against her. Nevertheless, for many years it 
was not on Belgrade or Bucharest that European eyes were 
turning. They gave a fleeting glance upon Bosnia : — which 
was not occupied and "pacified" by Austria until after bitter 
resistance by the Moslem element among the natives, and some 
really desperate fighting: but they were soon steadily fixed 
upon Bulgaria. Here was a new state, an unknown nation 
intruded into Balkan politics, and an unknown quantity is 
always perplexing and interesting. In 1870 hardly any 
western European knew where the district of Bulgaria was- 

249 



250 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

In 1880 its affairs were discussed even in obscure journals in 
distant America. 

Bulgaria had been kept small and subdivided because 
Disraeli had expected that the new country would be almost 
as completely under the czar's influence as Finland or 
Turkestan. But Britain and Austria had not been able to 
deny to Russia the task of organizing the country preparatory 
to setting up its new government. The Bulgar peasants were 
at first grateful to their liberators from Muscovy, but soon 
began to complain how Prince Dondukov-Korsakov, the czar's 
commissioner, filled up all the public positions with Russians 
and otherwise showed that he felt that he was over a kind of 
subject province. His intention was to tie Bulgaria to her 
great protector in the closest possible manner, and for that 
reason (although a devoted friend of autocracy at home) he 
helped to draft a constitution at once ultra-democratic and 
ultra-conservative, "which was so devised that the prince 
could be checkmated by the people, and the people by the 
prince, while the real power would remain with the czar." 1 
A parliament, elected by the people, was set up, and this 
Sobranje was endowed with very great power, although the 
prince was permitted decided latitude in interfering with 
its workings. His Excellency the commissioner firmly an- 
ticipated that the prince and the Sobranje would be per- 
petually quarreling, and that the prince would have to 
lean steadily upon the advice of the czar in order to keep down 
his subjects. What the Russian never reckoned upon was 
that the new prince and the new popular parliament, refus- 
ing to quarrel, might unite against their over-zealous "pro- 
tector" in the North. And this was precisely what was to 
happen. 

Under these auspices, and with decided Russian concur- 
rence, the Bulgarians found themselves selecting Prince 
Alexander of Battenberg, a son of the Prince of Hesse, and 
a nephew of the czar, as their first ruler (1879). He was 
only 22 years old when proclaimed, but he had already served 

i Miller, "The Ottoman Empire," p. 412. 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 251 

as a cadet at Plevna, and still later as a Prussian lieutenant 
He was erect, military and gallant, but he lacked a good 
education in political problems He could not speak the 
Bulgar language, and although obstinate and prone to quarrel 
with his advisers, did not in the least understand the tor 
tuous methods of a semi-oriental land, although he honestly 
desired the prosperity of Bulgaria. It was not an entirely 
fortunate selection. 

Alexander began by governing with the aid of the extrem< 
pro-Russian element among his subjects. He soon fount 
himself at odds with the Sobranje, wherein the so-called "na 
tionalists" (anti-Russians) were in the majority. In 188: 
he forced a suspension of the constitution, under threat o: 
quitting the country and leaving everything in chaos, anc 
thus secured dictatorial authority for a term of seven years 
But the prince was soon disgusted at the way the czar's gen 
erals thrust themselves into Sofia, monopolized the ministrie 
and treated the prince not as their master, but their too] 
Alexander was a German and he did not mix well with th 
Russians. In 1883 he suddenly restored the suspended con 
stitution and sent the two chief Russian ministers out o 
the country. From that moment it was evident that Bulgari; 
was not about to become a Muscovite satrapy, and there wa 
a great revolution in European opinion. Czar Alexander I 
was now dead. Czar Alexander III branded Prince Alex 
ander as an "Migrate" and quasi-traitor to Russia to whor 
he owed his crown, and began at once to undermine hi 
authority. But in England the feeling soon developed tha 
Bulgaria was not likely to be such a peril to British interest 
as had been feared. She was henceforth a principality to b 
encouraged, not crushed. 

Meantime that purely artificial segment of Bulgaria, East 
ern Rumelia, which had been set off as an "autonomous prov 
inee of the Turkish Empire," had naturally used its partia 
freedom to develop hopes for a complete union under its tru 
government at Sofia. The first Turkish governor-general 
Aleko Pasha, a smooth Greek, had been fairly popular, bu 
in 1 885 the sultan appointed the far less tactful and worth; 



>52 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

javril Pasha to the office, and the blow soon followed this 
provocation. On September 18th, 1885, at Philippopolis, the 
Eastern Roumelian capital, a band of Christian officers forced 
;heir way into the pasha's palace and informed him that his 
rule was at an end. The bewildered governor-general was 
mstled into a carriage and paraded around the city with a 
Bulgarian school mistress flourishing a naked saber at his 
;ide, and was then shipped off to Constantinople. The Sultan, 
:aken by surprise for an instant, did nothing. All eyes were 
:umed towards Prince Alexander at Sofia. The prince hesi- 
tated to defy Turkey and very likely Russia, but his min- 
isters gave him the choice of advancing to Philippopolis or 
retiring to Darmstadt. Bulgarian opinion wanted the union 
with Eastern Roumelia, and woe to the ruler that withstood ! 
Hie prince went straight to Philippopolis, and the Sobranje 
it once approved the union. Europe was thus confronted 
3y that most disagreeable thing to explain away — an accom- 
plished deed. 

Then followed a strange event. In 1878 England had been 
willing to fight Russia to prevent Bulgaria from being made 
united and strong, and Russia had complained bitterly be- 
2ause Bulgaria was to be left dismembered. In 1885, how- 
sver, such was Czar Alexander Ill's personal hatred of 
Prince Alexander (the "Battenberg," as St. Petersburg 
circles called him), that solemn instructions were sent to 
Russian officials from the imperial foreign office: "remember 
that the union [of the two Bulgarias] must not take place 
until after the abdication of Prince Alexander." On the 
other hand, English influence was all in favor now of un- 
doing the act of 1878. "If you can help to build up these 
[Balkan] peoples into a bulwark of independent states, and 
thus screen the 'Sick Man' from the fury of the northern blast, 
for God's sake do it!" Thus wrote the British ambassador 
to Russia (Morier) to the British ambassador at Constanti- 
nople (White). English diplomacy realized that a strong bar- 
rier state between Russia and the remnant of Turkey-in- 
Europe would be a great hindrance to the Czar, and the lat- 
ter had played straight into the hands of London by alienat- 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 253 

ing the Bulgars. Acting mainly under British pressure, 
Sultan Abdul Hamid did not resist the union of Eastern 
Rumelia with Bulgaria. A notable change seemed to have 
taken place on the map of the Balkans, without a shot being 
fired. 

Alexander of Russia had feared to coerce Bulgaria directly. 
That might have started a world war. But there was a much 
weaker ruler than he who was jealous, angry and irresponsi- 
ble. King Milan of Serbia was a clever, dissipated man who 
followed a policy which had made his little country exceed- 
ingly dependent on Austria. Very persistent rumor had 
it, that it was by such subserviency to Vienna that he got the 
funds for gay visits to Paris, for expensive friendships with 
actresses, and similar royal pleasures. Very probably Aus- 
tria now egged him on. Bulgaria must not grow powerful. 
Doubtless personal ambition impelled him also. In any case 
it was easy to tell the Serbians that "the balance of power 
in the Balkans'' had been destroyed, and that they must 
expand their boundaries at the expense of Bulgaria which 
was waxing too fast. On November 14, 1885, Serbia suddenly 
declared war on Bulgaria. All the cards seemed in Milan's 
favor. The Bulgar army was a wholly new creation, un- 
tested in battle. The czar suddenly recalled all the numer- 
ous Russian officers who had acted as its instructors, and mili- 
tary Europe imagined Prince Alexander as left utterly in 
the lurch, for the Serbians were experienced veterans of the 
wars with Turkey. 

Milan quitted Belgrade acclaimed with cheers as "King 
of Serbia and Macedonia," but his glory was short-lived. 
On the 16th of November, the Serbs met the Bulgars at 
Slivnitza, a village on the road to Sofia. There was a desper- 
ate three-day battle. The raw Bulgar levies under their 
young officers did not break and run away. They fought 
heroically, and in the end the Serbs were flung back into 
their own country with the foemen at their heels. Milan's 
troops were disgracefully routed. 1 Prince Alexander saw the 

i The defeat of the Serbians was so complete that it became the sub- 
ject for a comic opera,. "The Chocolate Soldier," well-known in Europe 
and America. 



254 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

road to Belgrade open before him, when Austria, intervened 
in the name of peace and informed the victors that if they 
continued their march they must face the troops of Franz 
Josef. 

The Bulgars were obliged to halt, make an armistice, and 
presently (1886) a definite peace with Serbia. The war had 
lasted only fourteen days. ''Bulgaria had gained from Serbia 
neither territory nor money; neither Pirot [a disputed town] 
nor pigs," but she did gain recognition of her right to East- 
ern Rumelia, and better still a consciousness of her own 
strength and powers of achievement. The battle of Slivnitza 
was a decisive battle inasmuch as it taught the world that 
Bulgaria was an effective fighting nation, not lightly to be 
put off the map. Milan returned to his dissipations at Bel- 
grade or sometimes at Paris, while Alexander returned with 
better grace to Sofia. 

One might have imagined that this victory would have as- 
sured Alexander of his throne, but in a very few months 
he was actually to lose it. It seemed intolerable to the whole 
vast Russian interest in the Balkans that a man who had 
proved so intractable to the czar should boast himself and 
prosper. After the battle of Slivnitza the prince failed to 
reward certain officers according to the deserts which they 
themselves considered their due. These discontented men 
speedily became conspirators under Russian influence. After 
some preliminary intrigues, on the night of August 21, 1886, 
a regiment of disloyal troops suddenly mutinied at Sofia and 
surrounded the princely palace, and the arch-conspirators 
forced their way into Alexander's bedroom. The prince es- 
caped into the garden, but was chased back with bayonets. 
The leading rebels tore a sheet out of a visitor's book on the 
table, scrawled a few words announcing an abdication and 
forced Alexander to sign. He was then hustled into a car- 
riage, and driven at full speed to the Danube, on reaching 
which he was thrust upon his own yacht and her bows pointed 
towards Russia. 

As a first stroke the deed had seemed prosperous, but the 
after-clap was quite otherwise. There was a celebration by 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 255 

the mutineers in Sofia and even a Te Deum in the cathedral 
over "the liberation of Bulgaria from Prince Battenberg. ' ' 
But from the outset many officers in the garrison had held 
aloof. Above all Stambulov, the most powerful of the min- 
isters, set his face against the conspiracy. In an amazingly 
short time a revulsion of popular feeling swept the mutineers 
out of power, and enabled Stamboulov to telegraph to Alex- 
ander to return to his people. 

The prince had been landed in Russia, but the czar's gov- 
ernment had not dared actually to detain him. He now 
returned in triumph amid the plaudits of all Bulgaria. Had 
luck favored him he could have resumed his government 
amid great popularity and the sympathy of nearly all non- 
Muscovite Europe. But he ruined his position by a griev- 
ous blunder. While returning to Bulgaria he telegraphed to 
the czar in a vain attempt to propitiate his mighty protector, 
"Kussia having given me my crown, I am ready to give it 
back to its sovereign. ' ' Magnanimity, however, was no qual- 
ity of the cold and ungenerous Alexander III. He took his 
unlucky namesake at his word. Instantly the czar published 
in the official paper at St. Petersburg, "I cannot approve 
your return to Bulgaria, as I foresee the sinister consequences 
that it may bring on that country, already so much tried . . . 
your Highness will understand what you must do. " 1 

The prince was received with frantic joy at Tirnova, Sofia, 
and elsewhere in Bulgaria. He entered his capital on Sep- 
tember 3, barely twelve days after he had been kidnapped, 
but to the great grief of his subjects he at once called his 
faithful officers around him and announced that he must 
again abdicate. Many of the soldiers burst into tears, cry- 
ing out, "Without Your Highness there is no Bulgaria." 
But Alexander persisted. His word was pledged to the czar ; 
besides, he felt the whole safety of the new Bulgarian state 
would be compromised if he endeavored to hold his position 
in the face of the enmity of his mighty neighbor. The de- 

i There were rumors, seemingly well founded, that the prince was 
deliberately tricked by Russian diplomats, as to the real attitude of the 
czar, and inveigled into a position where he could be forced to abdicate. 



256 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

eisive factor may well have been the attitude of Germany. 
Bismarck was throwing all his influence against the prince, 
not because of personal dislike, but because he feared an at- 
tempt by Russia to eject him by force would precipitate a gen- 
eral European war; — since 1870 Bismarck (after his lights) 
had become a zealous friend of peace. It was best for the 
prince to go quietly, and he went. 

Alexander left Bulgaria on September 7, 1886, amid the 
open lamentations of his people. But it was a pyrrhic vic- 
tory for the czar. Austria and England alike practically 
served notice on him that he would not be allowed to com- 
promise the freedom of Bulgaria or to dictate its internal 
affairs. The principality was overrun with pro-Russian spies 
and intriguers. The czar's rubles supplied a great corrup- 
tion fund. Stambulov, as head of the Bulgarian regents, 
flatly refused, however, to be bullied by the insolent threats 
of General Kaulbars, sent on as the Russian high commis- 
sioner "to restore order." At the election to the Sobranje 
there were elected 30 pro-Russians, 20 neutral deputies, and 
470 friends of Stambulov and supporters of national inde- 
pendence. The Russian yoke had been thrown off indeed, and 
since Alexander III did not dare to intervene by force and 
fight Austria and England, the last chance of Bulgaria be- 
coming a vassal state of Muscovy had vanished. 

For the next eight years Stambulov, the son of a poor 
inn-keeper, was the uncrowned ruler of the principality. 
He was a "strong man" of the Porfirio Diaz type, which 
Americans have seen in countries like Mexico. The majority 
of the nation had rallied around him, and the minority he 
eliminated or silenced by the arbitrary imprisonment or even 
the arbitrary execution of unwelcome agitators. The Rus- 
sophiles intrigued incessantly against him, but he had taken 
their measure — the czar would threaten, but he dared not 
fight — and so Stambulov went on his way. 

For six months after the exit of Prince Alexander the 
Bulgarian crown was being hawked around Europe for some 
eligible prince to accept. So long as the czar refused to 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 257 

recognize the candidate elected by Stambulov's government 
the princely crown had only a very uncertain value. But 
in December, 1886, a man of hardihood was found — Prince 
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, a German prince who, however, 
had also the advantage of descent from Louis-Philippe, one- 
time king of the French. He was, in addition, a relative of 
Queen Victoria. Dynastically it was a lucky choice from 
every standpoint save that of Russia, and Bismarck gave this 
young man of twenty-six very sage advice: "Let yourself 
be driven gently by the stream . . . your greatest ally is 
time, force of habit. Avoid everything that might irritate 
your enemies. Unless you give them provocation they can- 
not do you much harm, and in the course of time the world 
will become accustomed to see you on the throne of Bul- 
garia. ' ' x 

The new prince who now "mounted the throne of the 
glorious Bulgarian kings" had of course to face from the 
outset the formal protest of Russia at his accession, but no 
great harm was done by this save that the czar had as a 
consequence no diplomatic representative at Sofia. For a 
long time the government was conducted by Stambulov while 
Ferdinand slowly learned the situation and felt his way. 
The great minister did a notable work for Bulgaria — rail- 
roads, schools, industrial awakening, improved methods of 
agriculture, all these he brought to a hitherto benighted and 
backward land. But in the end he overplayed his part with 
"strong arm" methods. The passions of his enemies rose. 
One of his associates in power was murdered in Sofia; one 
of his lesser agents was stabbed while in Constantinople. At 
length the relations of Ferdinand and Stambulov became 
strained. The prince, who had been cannily gathering the 
reins into his own hands, and who was now sure of his posi- 
tion, was able to dispense with his too formidable vice-regent. 
In 1894 he forced Stambulov to resign, and all the fallen 
minister's enemies rejoiced over him. They were not con- 
tent merely to drive him from power ; in 1895 he was set 

J S. Whitman, "Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck," p. 179, 



loS THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ipon by three assassins and murdered under circumstances 
)f great brutality, while the government hardly lifted a 
inger to avenge him. 1 

These methods certainly were "Levantine" if not Oriental, 
but Prince Ferdinand was at length ruler in his own house. 
In 1896 he made his pact with Russia. Alexander III was 
lead and Nicholas II had partly forgotten the old feud. 
Besides, was not the death of Stambulov a kind of peace 
altering? Ferdinand himself was a Catholic, but his people 
were "Orthodox," even as were the Russians, and now the 
ruler's infant son Boris was solemnly "converted" to the 
Greek form of Christianity and at his baptism Nicholas II 
acted (by proxy of course) as godfather. Ferdinand was 
thus formally recognized by Russia, and instated in the good 
social graces of the czar and his court. For the next ten 
3dd years the western world heard comparatively little of 
Bulgaria. Stories were told of the steady economic develop- 
ment of the country, and of the creation of a formidable 
arm}-. The native race gained too a very fair name for its 
love of political liberty and its lack of aristocratic traditions. 2 
Nevertheless under the terms of the constitution the sovereign 
wan left with almost complete control of foreign affairs and 
}f the army. It was impossible, despite the outward recon- 
siliation, for Ferdinand of Bulgaria ever to be very friendly 
k> the Russia of the czars. Russian dominance in the 
Balkans implied death to the hopes, ever developing more 
Nearly, that Bulgaria should become the preponderant 
Balkan state. Besides, the relations of Germany and Russia 
^rew steadily less cordial and Ferdinand was after all a Ger- 
man prince, sent on his adventure with the good wishes of 
Berlin. Not until 1908, however, was he to begin to show 
his hand; then the "prince" proclaimed himself to all the 
world the independent and sovereign ' ' Tsar of Bulgaria. ' ' s 

i Only one of the murderers was tardily brought to trial, and then 
svas merely sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. 

2 There is, of course, the oft-repeated tale of the American visitor in 
Sofia, who was asked by a shoe-black in the public square, "Did you 
wish to meet my uncle the Prime Minister?" 

3 For convenience the rulers of Russia are here called "czars/' and 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 259 

While Bulgaria thus seemed to be developing a solid and 
advancing prosperity, and was receding from the unwel- 
come limelight, her western neighbor was far less fortunate. 
The annals of Serbia are almost as gory and troublous as 
those of medieval Scotland. Serbia was indeed an essentially 
primitive land, with the institutions of peaceful parliamen- 
tary life more a name than a reality. The country was small, 
poor and often unmanageable ; nor can outsiders studying the 
strife of its parties easily tell where patriotism ended and 
sordid selfishness began. Yet through it all, it was evident 
that a naturally gifted, intelligent people were struggling 
upward to the light — although handicapped earlier by the 
direct tyranny of the Turks, and hindered in great measure 
later by the absence of any seaport and by their complete 
dependence on Austria for every kind of commercial out- 
let, 1 

No nation can become wise, pacific and free until it is al- 
lowed to breathe, and Serbia could only breathe through Aus- 
trian lungs. As long as this continued the South Slavs had 
to remain a people of turbulent pig-raisers. 

King Milan was no man to free his country from this 
bondage. A throne to him was not a trust but an oppor- 
tunity. He was quite content to remain the satrap of Vienna, 
taking his private orders from Franz Josef's ministers, prob- 
ably in return for a steady pension. His queen Natalie, how- 
ever, was a Russian lady of strong anti-Austrian tendencies. 
This split the court asunder, and upon these national antip- 
athies came personal scandals and finally a divorce, which 
horrified all the prudes in Europe. The defeat by Bulgaria in 
1885 of course undermined Milan's popularity. He granted 
a liberal constitution in .1888, but could not make the people 
love him. In 1889, disgusted with the burdens of his in- 
glorious royalty, Milan abdicated. He spent much of the 

those of the Balkan kingdoms "tsars." Both words are, of course, 
transliterations of essentially the same Slavic title. 

i There is the story of how when protest was made, in the Belgrade 
parliament, against a very unfavorable commercial treaty with Austria, 
the Prime Minister declared, "You must vote this, gentlemen, or we are 
a ruined nation I " 



260 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

remainder of his life very "unconventionally" at Paris. He 
was an intelligent man but absolutely without principle, and 
he brought little but sorrow to his country. 

In his stead ruled his son Alexander, only 13 years old 
when he began his reign, and consequently at first represented 
by three regents. But the tone of Belgrade public life did 
not mend. The ex-king and ex-queen insisted on revisiting 
their son, and aired their differences by means of bloody 
scuffles between their partisans. Natalie had to be escorted 
to the station by the police and told to leave Belgrade; Milan 
more peaceably took the express back to Paris. At last in 
1893 Alexander suddenly threw off the restraints of boy- 
hood and invited his three regents to a dinner party, where 
he smilingly arrested them ; then he issued a proclamation de- 
claring himself of age, and assumed the actual government. 
In 1S94, by another stroke, he defied the "Radicals" by abol- 
ishing the liberal Constitution of 1889 and restoring the far 
more autocratic one of 1869; and for the next six years he 
ruled with a high hand. 

A woman undid this "tsar of the Serbians." The rulers 
of Belgrade did not have the status among western princes 
to allow them to aspire to wed German ''highnesses" or Aus- 
trian "arch-duchesses"; therefore, in 1900, Alexander pro- 
ceeded to marry a waiting lady of his mother, a certain 
Madame Draga Mashin, "the widow of a Bohemian engineer" 
and herself of "Bohemian tendencies," which Belgrade gos- 
sip at once exaggerated. No heir was born to this union, and 
quickly rumors spread that the new queen was busy arrang- 
ing that one of her own brothers should be declared successor 
to the throne. The king and queen became intensely un- 
popular. All the cafes and officers' messes in the Serbian 
capital developed into hotbeds of intrigue. Alexander felt 
that his position was becoming undermined and made vain 
efforts to save himself. He restored the suspended liberal 
institutions; then, seeing this brought no love from radicals, 
suspended them, then restored them again, with drastic re- 
visions, however, in favor of autocracy, "in order to secure 
order, unity and peace." 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 261 

By 1903 all Belgrade was on edge, knowing that a great 
faction hated Queen Draga and was making capital out of 
her gross personal irregularities, and that "action" was in 
the air. There was a plot rumored to poison the royal couple 
by the aid of a traitorous palace cook. There was another 
plot to shoot the king at the door of the Cathedral on Palm 
Sunday. But the real deed was done on the night of June 
10, 1903, just thirty-five years after Prince Michael, the 
king's predecessor, had been assassinated, — a proper anni- 
versary ! The band of officers was led by Colonel Mashin, the 
brother of the queen's first husband and her violent ill-wisher. 
A malcontent regiment seized the approaches to the palace. 
Dynamite bombs burst in the doors of the residence, and 
waving their revolvers the murderers ranged through the 
palace hunting for their prey. Alexander, the last of the 
line of Obrenovich, was shot down, clasping his wife in his 
arms ; Draga was stabbed and the two mangled corpses flung 
out the window. 1 It was a truly "Balkan" deed; duly com- 
pleted by the murder of the queen's brothers, who were 
prime minister and minister of war. 

The act may be justly described as "brutal but not un- 
provoked." Alexander and Draga had been fast becoming 
irresponsible tyrants, and it is one of the miseries of autoc- 
racy that it is highly difficult to end bad government with- 
out ending also the bad ruler. In the morning Belgrade 
openly rejoiced. The city was hung with flags; church bells 
rang; bands played; young people danced in the streets. A 
national assembly was promptly convened by the politicians 
who had sagely closed their eyes to the preparations for 
murder. All the papers of Europe might rage, every great 
power threaten its condign displeasure, the British minister 
might quit the city; but everybody knew that the last of the 
line of Obrenovich was dead and that unless the exiled house 

i ^Yhen the writer of this chapter was in Belgrade in 1905, local 
prnides would proudly indicate the precise chimney on the roof of the 
palace, behind which the wretched pair were found concealed when they 
wore shot down. The ordinary printed evidence, however, states that 
J -h<> d^ed was done in the Queen's clothes-closet, where she and the King 
were, hiding. 



262 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of Karageorgevich were recalled, Serbia would fall into 
anarchy. A national assembly therefore convened and pro- 
claimed Prince Peter Karageorgevich, an elderly gentlemen, 
who had spent most of his life in Geneva in exile. Whether 
the new "tsar" had been cognizant of all of the conspiracy 
is not quite certain; assuredly he was quite innocent of the 
murder. However, King Peter had to face his bitter troubles. 
He was at first the mere puppet of the regicides and dared not 
punish them. The great powers all eyed him with utter sus- 
picion. Indeed the only two of them that at first recognized 
him were Austria and Russia. Franz Josef denounced the 
murder as "a heinous and universally reprobated crime." 
But since he feared that if he refused recognition the Rus- 
sian influence would become all-powerful in Serbia, the Aus- 
trian minister did not depart; and little by little King Peter 
won back the good graces of Europe. He took oath to rule 
as a liberal "constitutional" monarch, and he held to his 
promise, while he gradually developed firmness enough to 
remove the regicides from power (1906). From that time 
till the outbreak of the Balkan wars, unlucky Serbia entered 
upon a period of comparatively peaceful economic develop- 
ment, and the little country receded from the public eye. It 
was only a calm before a fiercer gale, however; speedily Aus- 
tria was to annex Bosnia and thereby drive every South Slav 
into a frenzy; and after that was to come the whole chain 
of intrigues and deeds leading up to the tragedies of the 
Balkan wars. Finally, in 1914, Serbia was to be the occasion 
and center for the outbreak of the mightiest armed struggle 
the world has ever seen. 

While Bulgaria was thus defying the czar, and Serbia scan- 
dalizing Europe by the strange deeds in its royal palace, their 
neighbor Greece was showing the world the melancholy ex- 
ample of a small nation carried away by the memories of a 
great past and by a keen ambition for the instant realization 
of its just hopes, thereby launching upon a military task 
to which it was entirely unequal, and consequently meeting 
with humiliation and overthrow. 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 263 

Greece had been grievously disappointed that she had not 
been awarded a greater part of Thessaly and Epirus, follow- 
ing the Berlin Congress. She had kept quiet during the 
Russo-Turkish War on the strength of repeated assurances 
from the powers that she could get more by keeping still 
and trusting to their generosity than by drawing the sword. 
These promises had been very poorly kept. Especially Crete, 
a large island close to Greece, and with the majority of its in- 
habitants strongly Christian and ''Hellenic" in their sym- 
pathies, had been left to the misrule of the sultan. Between 
the Christian majority and the Moslem minority of the Cretan 
population there had been almost chronic civil war with the 
Turkish governors and garrisons giving their fellow Moham- 
medans just enough military aid to make the fighting odds 
well balanced and the misery of the island therefore perpetual. 
The " reform of Crete ? ' had been one of those standing de- 
mands by the powers upon the sultan, like the ''reform of 
Macedonia" and the "reform of Armenia." The sultan had 
always smoothly promised the reforms — and the devil's dance 
had continued. 

In 1868 an "organic statute" of liberties had been promised 
the Cretans, In 1878 this had been improved and amplified. 
In 1889 Abdul Hamid had recalled his promises, and thereby 
of course provoked a new insurrection, which could not be 
stamped out. In 1896 the insurgents were more than ordi- 
narily active and their kinsmen in Greece seethed with anxiety 
to rescue them and to annex the island. There were many 
other ticklish matters then at issue in the diplomatic world. 
Most of the great powers, especially England, sympathized 
platonically with the Greek demand for the ending of Turk- 
dom in Crete, but Germany, already drawing nigh to her 
Ottoman friends on the Bosphorus, set her face like flint 
against any scheme to dismember the Turkish Empire, and 
there was no unity among the other powers as to the pro- 
gram to be pursued in case they attempted a redistribu- 
tion of Abdul Hamid 's unhappy realm. Therefore with 
united voice the foreign ministries warned King George of 
Greece to restrain his people, and to wait before drawing the 



264 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

sword on Turkey, — none of the great powers would aid him. 

Unfortunately it was not in the power of King George (a 
very moderate and intelligent man) to wait. In Athens 
ardent patriots utterly despised the righting power of the 
Turks, and courageously ignored the feebleness and lack of 
organization of the Greek army. The king's hand was forced. 
He had to choose between yielding to popular clamor or los- 
ing his throne; and he preferred to keep the latter. In 
February, 1897, a Greek torpedo flotilla and a small body of 
troops were sent to Crete. The war-ships of the great powers 
prevented them from expelling the Turkish garrisons, but this 
only made national feeling burn the hotter. King George 
understood the situation perfectly, but his people had not 
drawn the sword since 1829 and were arrogant in their con- 
fidence of victory. Their intense love of democracy led the 
private soldiers to give very scant respect to their officers, 
and they forgot that all their successes in the old "War for 
Independence" had been won in strictly guerilla fighting, 
and that now they must measure arms in open battle. 
Checked in Crete, these over-zealous patriots therefore began 
raids in Macedonia. Soon there was brisk fighting on the 
Greek northern frontier. Abdul Hamid could restrain him- 
self no more. He knew that his army was superior, and that 
Germany would befriend him in case of any mishap, and 
accordingly the "Thirty Days' War" followed. 

Turkey declared war April 17, 1897. Instantly the Greek 
bubble burst. Edhem Pasha promptly broke the Greek lines 
in Northern Thessaly, and sent the army of Crown Prince Con- 
stantine 1 back in headlong rout to Larissa which they were 
fain to evacuate. The defeated Hellenes rallied and fought 
again, more stoutly but equally vainly, at Pharsalos. A 
third defeat at Domokos forced the defenders to retire still 
further south, and take their last stand at the classic Pass 
of Thermopylae. If Edhem forced this he could march into 

i This prince later, as King Constantine of Greece, was to play a 
notable if unenviable part in the Balkan phase of the great war, 1915— 
1017. 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 265 

Athens. It was believed in many quarters that Kaiser "Wil- 
helin II was contemplating such an event with satisfaction. 
The pasha had been accompanied by German officers. Not a 
word of sympathy for the Greeks came from the Berlin offi- 
cial press. The representative of the German minister at 
Athens made an ostentatious visit to the confinement camp 
of the few Turkish prisoners "to inquire for their welfare." 
Although Kaiser Wilhelm was the brother-in-law of the same 
Prince Constantine who had fled the field in Thessaly, his 
unconcealed friendship for the Turks went to the very limits 
of neutrality. It was all part of the fixed German policy of 
strengthening the Turkish alliance at any cost. 

When the news of Domokos reached Athens there was panic 
in that capital. Popular clamor accused the innocent king 
of betraying the national cause. The royal family durst not 
drive out on the street. Yet there was nothing for it but 
to confess that the case was desperate and ask for an armistice, 
On May 20, 1897, the Turks were compelled to give one. 
Even Germany could not risk the complications if Abdul 
Hamicl seemed too triumphant ; besides, if the war continued, 
even with Turkish victories, so many of the Sultan's troops 
would be diverted that Bulgaria might strike to enlarge her 
southern boundaries. The powers, however, compelled the 
Greeks to pay for this gallant but ill-advised attempt tc 
rescue their Christian brethren in Crete by tasting all the 
dregs of defeat, Certain strategically located villages in 
Thessaly were ceded back to Turkey by the final treaty of 
peace, and Greece had to submit to a war idemnity of about 
$20,000,000, a heavy burden for so small a nation. To dis- 
charge it, she had to place her finances under the control oi 
commissioners from the great powers, and to undergo griev 
ous taxation. Thus disastrously ended a brave but reckless 
adventure. 

Nevertheless, the efforts of the Greek patriots were no1 
wholly vain. The conditions in Crete were intolerable. Ger 
many and her satellite Austria openly washed their hands 
of the business and declared they could do nothing that mighi 



266 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

displease the Sultan, but the other four great powers were 
less squeamish. Actually eject the Turks from Crete they 
would not — that might have precipitated more fighting, but 
in 1898 they set up what amounted to an antonomous govern- 
ment in the island, with all the preponderance granted to the 
Christian majority, confined the Turkish garrison to an islet 
in Suda Bay, where alone the sultan's crescent flag was to 
be kept flying, and, last but not least, appointed Prince 
George of Greece x to the post of ' ' High Commissioner of the 
Powers, under the suzerainty of the sultan." The mere 
selection of such a governor-general was of course tacit ad- 
mission that the claims of Greece to the island were well- 
founded. 

The results of the change were soon evident. An efficient 
gendarmerie under Italian officers restored peace to the 
afflicted island. Many of the Mohammedans (now they had 
ceased to be the governing class) emigrated quietly to Asia 
Minor, thus simplifying the religious situation. Crete be- 
came a reasonably prosperous and well-ordered petty repub- 
lic, although the desires for final annexation to Greece never 
died away, and on the eve of the Balkan wars were to blow 
up again to white heat. 

During the few years preceding 1908, the date which 
heralded a great change, Balkan affairs were comparatively 
quiet. Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece, as well as Montenegro 
and Rumania, had recovered from their various spasms and 
were not intruding in the western newspapers. Germany 
and Austria had not yet developed their full ambitious 
policies. Everybody knew that Turkish misrule was creating 
a grievous problem in Macedonia, but that was a danger that 
had been many times postponed. Then suddenly there came 
a most curious revolution in Constantinople (1908). At 
first it shook only the sultan's palace; then the whole Turk- 
ish Empire; then the Balkan kingdoms; then the great pow- 
ers of Western Europe, — and behold the face o p all things 
was changed! From 1908 onward, the Near East beheld 

i A younger brother of Prince Constantine. 



THE BALKAN KINGDOMS 267 

event follow on event, and crisis on crisis, with a startling 
rapidity until the catastrophe of 1914. 

To understand how this sinister process could originate in 
Constantinople and not elsewhere, one must examine the 
reign and evil doings of Abdul Hamid II, "the red sultan." 



CHAPTER XIII 

ABDUL HAMID, " THE RED SULTAN " HIS DEEDS AND 

DOWNFALL 

WHILE the new Balkan kingdoms were painfully wrest- 
ling with their several problems, their old oppressor 
the Turk was being thrown wearily back upon himself and 
was trying for a new lease of life. 

In Europe the Treaty of Berlin left the sultan the mere 
shadow of his former dominions, — some 65,000 square miles, 
divided with rough equality between Thrace (or Roumelia 
proper), Macedonia and Albania. About 6,000,000 people 
lived in this long, narrow, ill-compacted "Turkey in Eu- 
rope," and outside of Constantinople and the Albanian up- 
lands the majority of them were Christians. "Turkey in 
Asia," however, was still a truly huge empire, embracing 
some 700,000 square miles, without reckoning uncertain 
claims to suzerainty over the tribes of Arabia and of Tripoli 
in Africa. These Asiatic dominions possessed little unity 
save that of a common oppression. It was utterly beyond the 
ability of the Ottomans, although they had been in Asia Minor 
since well before 1300, to weld even the Mohammedan por- 
tion of their subjects into a single nation. The population of 
Asiatic Turkey was about 17,000,000. Of this possibly 
6,000,000 were actual Turks. The remainder was rather 
equally divided between non-Ottoman Mohammedans, Arabs 
and Kurds (the latter mainly in the Caucasus Mountains), 
and various kinds of Christians, — Greeks, Armenians and 
Syrians. The Christians were the leaders of the merchant 
and artisan classes and probably represented at least ninety 
per cent, of the intelligence and hope of progress in the en- 
tire empire. The Turks were settled pretty solidly in Asia 
Minor and their lower elements were hard working though 
very unprogressive peasants; of course they also furnished 

268 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 269 

most of the civil officials and the officers for the army. The 
Arabs in Syria and Mesopotamia were on very cold terms 
with their Ottoman fellow believers. They represented an 
older and worthier type of Moslem civilization, and regarded 
the Turks as oppressive interlopers. As for the Kurds, they 
were such crude, unruly mountaineers that the sultans counted 
themselves lucky if they were not in constant uproar and 
rebellion. On the whole, the Asiatic Christians and Moham- 
medans lived together in tolerable harmony ; but the least un- 
lucky incident would touch off the Moslem fanatics to go on 
a Jihdad — a "holy war" to kill infidels — and then massacre 
would become the order of the day. It is needless to remark 
that in 1S78 Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia had prac- 
tically no railroads and very few decent highroads, and that a 
great part of the sultan's Asiatic dominions represented the 
true unspoiled Orient, — a certain amount of tawdry luxury 
and glitter almost hidden under a much vaster amount of 
squalor, sordidness, primitiveness in all economic and cultural 
conditions, with here and there black patches of even grosser 
barbarism. If the conditions in Turkey in Europe were bad, 
conditions in Turkey in Asia were still worse. And Europe 
had hardly given them the slightest serious attention. 

Abdul Hamid II had come to the throne in 1876, after two 
palace revolutions, which gave him warning to tread warily. 
Almost immediately after his succession came the disastrous 
Russo-Turkish War with the loss of Bulgaria, and the virtual 
loss of Bosnia and Cyprus. 1 This was no glorious beginning 
for a reign, but everybody knew that Abdul Hamid was not 
responsible for the misrule and bad generalship which led to 
the catastrophe. It was easy to exile or to bowstring certain 
unfortunate pashas; and the world at first looked on the 
new sultan as a man likely to bring a real regeneration to 
Turkey. 

Even with great abilities the task of a reformer in the Otto- 
man empire would have been an almost impossible one; and 

i Theoretically these lands were held only temporarily by the sultan's 
good friends Austria and England; practically all the world knew they 
were lost forever. 



270 THE ROOTS OF THE "WAR 

Abdul Hamid had no ambitions as a reformer. He was a man 
of much capacity, but his antipathy for things Christian and 
western was intense. Christendom had torn from him some 
of his fairest provinces, and to the best of his ability he would 
make Christendom pay the price. As he watched events not 
unshrewdly from his gilded chambers in the Yildiz-Kiosk by 
the Bosphorus, two things became increasingly clear to him: 
first, that the Great Powers of Europe were intensely jealous 
of one another, that under scarcely any circumstances would 
the other nations allow Russia a second time to punish the 
sultans for their sins, and that although the "concert of 
Europe" might present "joint-notes" and threaten him, it 
could almost never act decisively. Secondly, that there was 
developing in Central Europe a powerful friend for the 
Ottomans. The German Empire did not touch Turkey terri- 
torially. It disclaimed any ambition to make annexations. It 
did not pose as a champion of the "Orthodox" Christians of 
the Sultan's empire as did Russia; or of the "Catholic" 
Christians as did France. 1 The Hohenzollern kaiser merely 
seemed to desire "friendly relations" with Constantinople and 
a proper chance for the commercial expansion of his sub- 
jects. Abdul Hamid was presently led to believe that the 
great military machine created and led to victory by von 
Moltke would be at his service in case the czar again under- 
took to make the Crescent retreat before the Cross, or England 
translated her admonitions to "reform" into harsh deeds. 
The sultan doubtless realized that his "brother" at Berlin 
was scarcely hinting of this protection out of disinterested 
love ; but this troubled him little. The future could care for 
the future. The important thing was that for the moment he 
had a free hand for revenge and reaction. 

From 1880 to 1908 Turkey was governed under a stark 
tyranny worthy rather of the ninth than of the nineteenth 
century. The few pashas who dared to hint of genuine re- 
form, or of an attempt to galvanize the institutions of the 
empire, were imprisoned or obliged to flee into exile. The 

i This was true of France down to the disestablishment of the Cath- 
olic Church in that country, early in this century. 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 271 

grand viziers became simply the first ministers of despotism. 
Liberty of press became such a farce that virtually no one 
would read a Turkish newspaper because everything of the 
least interest, even on non-political subjects, was carefully 
excised by the vigilant censor. A distinguished American, 
traveling through Turkey, was invited to address a religious 
meeting of native Christians. He chanced to use the word 
''freedom." The interpreter dared not translate the phrase 
containing it — the act might have landed him in a dungeon. 
Indeed a certain side of Abdul Hamid 's government seemed as 
if taken from plain farce comedy. An American mission col- 
lege imported some elementary chemistry text-books from 
England. The consignment was held up in the customs office 
and the professor in charge was informed that the volumes 
were "highly seditious." When he expressed surprise, he was 
told a dangerous cipher against the sultan had been discov- 
ered, and he was shown the familiar formula for water, H 2 0. 
It was gravely explained to him that "H" undoubtedly indi- 
cated [Abdul] Hamid, and "2" even more clearly connoted 
1 ' Second ' ' ; while " O " was a palpable covering for ' ' nothing. ' ' 
The cipher therefore obviously read "Abdul Hamid Second 
equals, or is good for, nothing" — a deliberate incitement to 
treason ! 

Another sage deduction of the sultan affected the entire 
city of Constantinople. Long after the use of electric light 
was common elsewhere, the city of the padishahs was illumi- 
nated by gas. The reason for this was that Abdul Hamid 
lived in perpetual fear of death by dynamite, and the differ- 
ence between a "dynamo" (needful for electricity) and "dy- 
namite" never became clear in the mind of the "Commander 
of the Faithful." He prudently prohibited them doth to 
be on the safe side. 

Only one act of real benefit came from this ruler's incense 
timorousness. A sacred Mollah (Mohammedan holy-man) 
had predicted that the sultan would perish of the plague. To 
give this prophecy the lie, the sultan caused divers precau- 
tions to be taken for the cleansing and sanitation of Constanti- 
nople, and for the establishment of a strict quarantine. This 



272 THE ROOTS OF THE TVAR 

policy is said to have saved the lives of some thousands of his 
subjects, but it was almost the only deed for which they could 
ever bless him. 

And yet with all this, Abdul Ilamid, according to his lights, 
possessed a certain fearful intelligence. He detested every 
suggestion that the Western civilization was superior to the 
Oriental ; his words indeed dropped honey to every distin- 
guished Occidental visitor who was invited for coffee and sher- 
bet to the palace, but every attempt to introduce changes into 
the "unchanging East" was met with almost masterly obstruc- 
tion. The sultan was frightfully extravagant in his court and 
harem. The revenues wrung out of the Armenian merchants 
and the toiling rayahs of Asia Minor were spent, even as in the 
palmy days of Solyman the Magnificent, on the odalisques, the 
fat Circassian beauties and the infamous boy favorites who 
were marshaled by the chief of the eunuchs. Every kind of 
public service was neglected. The Ottomans had possessed a 
fairly formidable fleet in the seventies. The iron-clads were 
now moored along the water-front at Constantinople and 
allowed to become land-locked by the growth of sea-weeds and 
barnacles, while their decks and turrets were covered with 
flower-gardens grown by their idling care-takers. Meanwhile 
the "captains" and "admirals," favored satellites of the 
padishah, idled ashore, squandering the upkeep money of the 
navy. Much of the army was miserably equipped and fed and 
still worse paid. The sultan, nevertheless, knew how to keep 
himself in power. Trusted and devoted myrmidons were 
seldom asked what they took from the treasury, and an ade- 
quate number of picked regiments were kept at Constanti- 
nople, their loyalty being assured by prompt and high pay and 
very tender discipline. For long Abdul Hamid's grip on the 
throne seemed so firm that no one ventured to shake it. 

After 1878 the old influence of England at Constantinople 
waned. By exacting Cyprus she had destroyed any claims 
to gratitude for upsetting the treaty of San Stefano. By her 
occupation of Egypt (1882), a country still nominally under 
Turkish sway, that gratitude had been still more diminished. 
The English had become ashamed of the countenance they 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 273 

had given to Ottoman iniquities in the past, and Gladstone 
and Lord Salisbury sent too much scolding advice through 
their ambassadors to make their words very welcome. Rus- 
sian influence also waned. Bulgaria was growing into a solid 
state and her relations with Russia were not cordial. She 
would hardly let the czar's troops cross her willingly, and if 
her neutrality were violated by the Russians, Austria would 
have much to say. England and Russia (now allied with 
France) were still on very bad terms. A combination of these 
powers against Turkey seemed the last thing possible. Abdul 
Hamid was thus growing more confident as the eighties ad- 
vanced and the nineteenth century entered its last decade. 

In 1888 died William I of Germany, likewise his son, the 
short-reigning Emperor Frederick. A new master was in 
power in Berlin, a master who would not hesitate to depart 
abruptly from old diplomatic paths, who had soaring am- 
bitions for his monarchy, and who was to prove not over-nice 
in his methods. On November 1, 1889, the German imperial 
yacht, the Hohenzollern, steamed through the Dardanelles, 
between the saluting forts. On board were William II and his 
Empress. It was their first visit of ceremony to any great 
European sovereign, and it is worthy of notice that they 
selected for this high honor no Christian monarch but the 
Kalif of Islam. They received an ovation at Constantinople, 
tricked out with all the pageantry and obsequiousness of the 
East. Prussian Kultur and Ottoman medievalism met hap- 
pily together. Abdul Hamid went to extravagant lengths to 
do his friends full honor. "Rarely has a ceremonial visit 
been productive of consequences more important." 

William II was on the eve of breaking with the great chan- 
cellor he had inherited from his grandfather. Bismarck had 
been cordial indeed with the sultan, and willing enough to 
have him look hopefully to Berlin, rather than London for 
comfort and counsel, but he had never approved of ambitious 
schemes for imperial expansion. William II, however, be- 
longed to a younger and bolder generation. Soon he was to 
dismiss his aging servant and do that which was right in his 
own eyes. The chancellor 's conservatism was to become a dis- 



274 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

credited tradition. "Bismarck," wrote one of the German 
authors of that younger school in whom the kaiser delighted, 
"merely led us to the threshold of German regeneration.'' 
The past belonged to the minister, the future to the emperor ; 
and the latter willed the rapprochement of Germany and the 
Turk. 

Abdul Hamid probably did not enquire the price his re- 
doubtable new friend would ultimately ask for his protection. 
Possibly his Oriental cunning made him believe that if ever 
Berlin in turn became too domineering he could seek defend- 
ers again from St. Petersburg or London. The important 
thing was that for the moment this informal but very real 
alliance with Germany made him quite independent of the 
dictation of both of those capitals. He could hardly have 
known that as early as 1886 the distinguished German Orient- 
alist Dr. Spenger had stated, "Asia Minor is the only territory 
of the world which has not yet been monopolized by a Great 
Power; and yet it is the finest field for colonization. If Ger- 
many does not miss the opportunity, and if she seizes it 
before the Cossacks clutch hold, she will have secured the best 
part in the division of the world." But Abdul Hamid ought 
to have known that the Ilohenzollerns never ruined themselves 
by acts of disinterested kindness. The immediate prospects, 
however, were wholly satisfactory. We need not examine 
here what hopes and projects William II and his kindred 
spirits in Germany were entertaining touching Turkey, but 
only what the Sultan speedily did himself. 

In the mountains, near the southeastern coasts of the 
Black Sea and in the eastern part of Asia Minor, with scat- 
tered colonies elsewhere, especially in Constantinople, lay 
the Armenians. A fraction of this people was across the 
border in Russian Transcaucasia, but the great majority 
(some 2,000,000) lay under the power of Abdul Hamid. 
These Armenians were an ancient and much-tried race. On 
the sculptured slabs of hoary Nineveh the Assyrian kings had 
vaunted their bloody triumphs over the men of "Uratu" — 
the dwellers in the Armenian hill-country. Conquerors had 
come and gone : the Armenians still were there. They seldom 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN'' 275 

succeeded as soldiers. Roman, Persian, Arab and Turk all 
oppressed them, but they retained tenaciously their native 
language and customs, and their oft-persecuted Christian 
faith. Very many of them of course were peasants, but their 
upper classes had come to provide much of the brains of the 
Turkish Empire. These "Christian Jews" were bankers and 
merchants in their upper social strata; money-changers and 
hucksters in their lower. The Ottomans often hated them 
because they were richer, cleverer and more progressive than 
their masters. Still, for decades there had been no grievous 
friction. Then suddenly, towards the end of the nineteenth 
century, "Armenia" became a word unwelcomely familiar to 
Western ears. 

The Armenians had been impartially mistreated, of course, 
along with the rest of the sultan's subjects, and since they 
were Christians the great powers inserted a special clause in 
the Berlin treaty making the Turkish government pledge the 
Armenian districts "improvements and reforms" and guaran- 
tees of "security against the Circassians and Kurds. 8 " Be- 
sides, by the "Cyprus Convention" Turkey had very specifi- 
cally promised England "to introduce the necessary reforms 
. . . for the protection of the Christians ... in these 
(Asiatic) territories." (See p. 94.) The position of the 
Armenians, therefore, after 1878, ought to have been consid- 
erably improved. 

But Abdul Hamid soon willed otherwise. Into his heart 
there had entered the tyrant's demon, fear. He had seen 
Serbia, Bosnia. Bulgaria and Rumania all slip from Turkish 
suzerainty or direct lordship. He knew too that among the 
Armenians there was a wide circle of those who were encour- 
aged by the success of their fellow-bondsmen in the Balkans, 
and who were ready to start an agitation for Armenian free- 
dom also. They could adduce plenty of typically Turkish acts 
of oppression. The "reforms" were still merely pious wishes, 
and about 1890 they organized a political society called "The 
Bell," and began an agitation in Western Europe for Ar- 
menian liberty. 

It was not a fortunate time. Apart from the attitude of 



276 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Germany, Czar Alexander III was very unwilling to encour- 
age a "free Armenia," fearing the liberated folk would prove 
as ungrateful to Russia as in Bulgaria, and halt the Musco- 
vite advance southward with another barrier state. The Rus- 
sian policy was clearly at that time to wait until a lucky turn 
in European affairs left them free to strike the Sultan boldly 
and to absorb his whole dominion. This Armenian agitation, 
however, filled Abdul Hamid with terror. He must kill the 
serpent of rebellion, ere it could raise its head. Likewise 
he was very angry at the perpetual nagging advice and threats 
of intervention by certain of the great powers, especially by 
England. Also, as intimated, he was now grown bold to risk 
the immediate consequences of action, by the pledges of good 
will from Wilhelm II. He struck, struck ruthlessly, and 
gained a name along with Zhengis-Khan and Alva in universal 
history. 

In 1S93 there were some slight agitations in the Armenian 
mountain villages. This gave Abdul Hamid his pretext for 
"restoring order." In 189-i he let loose on many Armenian 
districts, not at first the Turks, but the even more ferocious 
and fanatical Kurds of the Caucasus uplands. When these 
did not suffice, they were duly helped out by Turkish regular 
troops. The story is one catalog of horrors that seemed un- 
surpassed until in 1915 the Armenians were the victims of a 
yet greater massacre, with the Prussian this time the avowed 
and not the silent partner of the butchers. 

The massacre began in August, 1894, in the villages of the 
Sassoun district in the province of Bitlis. Nine hundred 
Armenians there were slain in cold blood with every possible 
barbarity. Zekki Pasha, in charge of this worthy work, was 
decorated by the Sultan for his public "services." The am- 
bassadors of the great powers were horrified. Great Britain 
demanded a commission of inquiry. The Sultan blandly an- 
swered by ordering a commission "to inquire into the criminal 
conduct of the Armenian brigands." Nothing was done to 
punish the guilty. Village after village blazed to heaven, 
while the victims poured out their blood. Schemes of "re- 
form" were amicably discussed at Constantinople between the 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE EED SULTAN" 277 

ambassadors and the grand vizier — and still came in the tales 
of massacre accompanied by deeds of "the foulest outrage and 
the most devilish cruelty. ' ' 1 All through 1895 the systematic 
demons continued their work, moving from district to district. 
In 1896, goaded beyond endurance, a band of frenzied Ar- 
menians rose at Constantinople and seized the Ottoman bank. 
Of course their attempt instantly failed, and the angry sultan 
retaliated by having 6,000 Armenians hunted down and 
clubbed to death in the very streets of the capital, and under 
the very noses of their Excellencies, the protesting ambassa- 
dors. 

It was patent to all the world that Abdul Hamid cared noth- 
ing for moral appeals, nothing for ordinary threats. 2 Only 
an overwhelming show of force with an obvious intention to 
use it would make him confess his sins and render what justice 
was possible. Fifty thousand Armenians, according to an 
English, 75,000 by an American estimate, had perished. The 
consciences of very many Englishmen were terribly stirred. 
There were great meetings for protest in London and Liver- 
pool. Mr. Gladstone, now a very old man, raised his voice in 
angered protest, branding Abdul Hamid as "the Great As- 
sassin/' while others as pithily styled the padishah "Abdul 
the Damned." In France too there was fury and indigna- 
tion. "The red sultan/' the Parisian journals called him. 
But France was still hesitant to play a bold hand for herself 
in foreign affairs : Russian ministers were cynically declaring 
that "they did not want another Bulgaria in Asia Minor." 
Austria was already dancing to Germany's pipe, and although 

i The words are those of the calm and responsible British statesman, 
the Duke of Argyle. 

2 The writer recalls being present as a lad, at a meeting in an 
American city to protest against these Armenian atrocities. A dis- 
tinguished judge declaimed against the Sultan, but asserted that soon 
the "moral indignation of the world" would force him to mend his ways. 
Even at that time I pondered confusedly on the question, "But what if 
Abdul-Hamid nares nothing for the 'moral indignation of the world'?" 
— The excellent judge merely exhibited that Anglo-American ignorance 
of militarism and its logic that was to breed us all the miseries subse- 
quently caused by pacifism. 



278 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

"William II in no wise promised to take up arms for Abdul 
Hamid, all the tremendous diplomatic influence of Berlin was 
thrown in favor of ignoring the tragedies and doing nothing. 
The Prussian official press explained away the deeds which 
csied to God, and the kaiser's ambassador was often at the 
Yildiz-Kiosk — assuredly not to threaten. 

No nation was more responsible at that day, however, for 
the existence of Turkey and for her chance to work iniquity 
than England. England had forced through the Treaty of 
Berlin and the Cyprus Convention. Her honor was plighted 
to secure reforms for Armenia. The best instincts of England 
were in favor of a bold stroke worthy of a mighty nation. A 
great fleet lay off the Dardanelles: and those were before the 
days of drifting mines and the huge howitzers which closed 
the straits in 1915. The prime minister of Britain Avas Lord 
Salisbury, a man of ability, personal honor and considerable 
statesmanship. But he was a "Conservative' ' of the Disraeli 
school, full of dread of Russia and with a surviving partiality 
for the Turks, although admitting their sins. He was weighed 
down by the many great cares of the world-wide British 
Empire. He had no firm ally, if he attacked the sultan, save 
possibly Italy — the weakest of the great powers. It was the 
time when courage urged a bold stroke; but the prudence 
which tapers off into cowardice urged procrastination. Salis- 
bury issued solemn admonitions to the sultan that misgovern- 
ment would earn calamity : he urged the other powers to join 
in common action — he met stolid ears at Berlin and St. Peters- 
burg. And then he did nothing. The technical excuse was 
good. The fate of Turkey was an affair for "the Concert of 
Powers": and no one power had the right to disturb the gen- 
eral peace of the world by individual action to which the rest 
did not consent. But technical excuses avail not at the 
judgment bar of history. In 1896 not merely Abdul Hamid 
but wiser men than he believed that they had taken the 
measure of Great Britain, and that despite her proud navy 
and spreading empire, save for the most sordid reasons she 
would not fight. 1 And of course from this time British diplo- 

i In 1906 the author, while in Berlin, was assured by a prominent 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 279 

matic influence in many oriental quarters waned, and German 
influence increased. 

At that time, and subsequently, Englishmen felt and ex- 
pressed keen humiliation at this failure of their government 
to discharge a very specific moral obligation. The incident 
deepened that most unfortunate belief in the inherent pacifism 
of the British Empire which was one of the direct causes 
of the calamity of 1914; and in 1915 myriads of Englishmen 
were to perish on that peninsula of Gallipoli, before which, 
in 1896, their fleet strained on its moorings, to attack and to 
pass on to Constantinople. The cowardice and flinching was 
that of Robert Arthur Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, and his 
cabinet. The penalty was paid by the whole British Empire 
within nineteen years. 

Abdul Hamid, "the red sultan," cared little for the scold- 
ings in the London and Paris papers. He had discovered his 
friend. He had taken the measure of his enemies. He had 
"quieted" the remnant of the wretched Armenians for yet a 
while. In 1897 came the brief war with Greece over Crete, 
and the Turkish army, disciplined by Yon der Goltz and other 
German officers, was able to give its master all the joys of 
a conqueror. Even so, many monarchs of Europe looked 
askance at Abdul the Damned. There was one ruler, however, 
who did not share their qualms — William II. 

Barely was the Greek war out of the way when the German 
Kaiser again hastened to visit his august Mohammedan friend 
who had just so happily resisted iC malice domestic and 
foreign levy." Bismarck was out of power now, and dying. 
The Emperor was fain to show his full hand. The "red 
sultan" was delighted at the cordiality of his guest: "the im- 
perial visitor kissed him and called him brother." There 
were many cordial tete-a-tctes: "it was then that the pro- 
posals for the Bagdad railroad [to be built by German cap- 
professor, who became one of the leading spirits in the Pan-German 
movement and who was close to the circle of William II, that he was 
convinced that "England would never go to war provided her soil was 
not invaded nor her commerce directly molested." He cited this failure 
to make good her threats against Turkey in 1896 as proof positive of 
iis contention. 



280 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ital] were negotiated : and privileges were secured which have 
developed into a stupendous mortgage over the whole Turkish 
Empire. French prerogatives and concessions were arbi- 
trarily revoked. British and French influences were reduced 
to naught." 1 William. II, however, traveled far beyond his 
comrade's palace by the Bosphorus and its rose gardens. 
Like a crusader of old he must go on to Jerusalem. It was a 
crusade under strictly modern auspices. Not Peter the 
Hermit but "Messrs. Thomas Cook & Co., Tourist Agents," 
personally conducted the new champion of Western civiliza- 
tion from Jaffa up to Jerusalem and then on to Damascus. In 
Berlin the kaiser had passed for a zealous Protestant, and 
indeed at the Holy City William II did show an approving 
interest in various Lutheran missions. lie also disphvyed a 
truly impartial zeal for the prosperity of the German Cath- 
olics in Palestine: but it is to be feared his main interests in 
Syria were hardly the direct propagation of the Gospel. As a 
witty Frenchman who wrote up this pilgrimage observed: 
"The emperor varied his parts as quickly as he changed his 
uniforms." Within fourteen days of having offered his 
"profound homage" at the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem and 
the manger at Bethlehem, he found himself in Damascus — a 
distinctly Moslem city. The blood of the slaughtered Ar- 
menians had hardly sunk into the ground. In the corps of 
smiling dark-mustachioed Turkish officers that salaamed to 
the great ally of their master, were many very probably who 
had slain the babe, and more than slain the mother; but all 
was cordial and charming even for the polite East. The 
kaiser delivered an address on the 8th of November, 1898, 
before these servants of the second Herod. One of its sen- 
tences stuck in the minds of Western statesmen: "His 
Majesty the sultan Abdul Hamicl, and the three hundred 
million Mohammedans who reverence him as Kalif, 2 may rest 

i Bracq. "The Provocation of France," p. 69. 

2 This implied not merely the Turkish Moslems, but all the other fol- 
lowers of the Prophet who considered the sultan as "kalif" — a kind of 
Islamic pope and head of their religion whatever their political al- 
legiance. 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE HED SULTAN' 4 281 

assured that at all times the German Emperor will be their 
friend." That meant, if words mean anything, that the 
emperor was to constitute himself the general champion of all 
the millions of Mohammedans under British, French and 
Russian rule, and even of the Sulu Isles of the Philippines, 
which had just been seized by the United States. Of course 
William II did not translate his ideas more clearly or put 
them into instant action, but from this time onward the 
chances of Germany yoking all Islam to its chariot wheel and 
making Mohammedanism an agent for Teutonic propaganda 
were recognized by responsible men. 1 

From this time onward it was recognized that the German 
ambassador at Constantinople exercised more real power in 
Turkish affairs than the average grand vizier. As a fruit 
of the emperor's visit, the negotiations for the construction 
of the Bagdad railway, which was to connect Constantinople 
with the Tigris River and then with the Persian Gulf, went 
forward to a climax fortunate for Germany. In fairness it 
must be said English commercial interests about 1880 could 
probably have won a similar opportunity, but the chance was 
ignored because the eyes and expectations of all Britons were 

1 The writer was informed by American missionaries in Asiatic Tur- 
key that they had heard Ulemas solemnly explain to the faithful thai 
the Lutheranism of the Kaiser was really only a slight modification of 
the true teachings of the Prophet, and that Germans ought not to be 
reckoned infidels: also they tell that William II has been often prayed 
for in mosques as "His Islamic Majesty." In 1899 a German Protes- 
tant pastor, a keen observer of Teutonic policy in the East, wrote as 
follows: "We must be politically indifferent to the sufferings of the 
Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire. . . . As Christians we wel- 
come the expansion of the faith, but our politics have no occasion to 
be concerned with Christian missions. . . . When we have made our 
choice we must never turn back. William II has made his choice. He 
is the friend of the Padishah, because his faith is in a greater Ger- 
many." (Friedrich Naumann, "Asia," p. 148.) 

German policy was not always so indifferent to the cause of mis- 
sions, however: witness the seizure of Kiau-Chau in China, almost at 
the time the above words were written, on the avowed grounds that the 
murder of two German missionaries must be avenged. Evidently His 
Imperial and Royal Majesty felt a greater obligation to enforce the 
blessings of Christianity upon the Chinese than upon the Turks. 



282 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

centered on the route to India via Suez, and they were not 
anxious to develop a rival highway. Now in 1902 a conven- 
tion was signed for the construction of this railway under dis- 
tinctly German auspices. It was all part of the grand scheme 
that was to yoke Hamburg, Vienna, Belgrade, Constantinople, 
Bagdad and finally Basra on the Persian Gulf in one magnifi- 
cent steel trunk-line controlled end to end from Berlin. "A 
great conception, worthy of a scientific and systematic 
people," admitted an Englishman frankly. " Should it ma- 
terialize, it will turn the flank of the great Sea-Empire [of 
Britain]." x Of course the scheme was still imperfect. Ger- 
man control over the essential link in Serbia was far from 
established : and English influence was quite strong enough to 
halt the building of the link from Bagdad to Basra which gave 
the ocean outlet at the doors of India. However, the work 
now gradually went forward, conducted by skillful German 
engineers, and the completion of the vast project could await 
the fortunate turn of events. Serbia in her day must suc- 
cumb, and there would be a method of handling even England. 
Abdul Kamid sat contentedly in the Yildiz-Kiosk and found 
the world going pleasantly around him. He had snapped his 
fingers at England. In 1904-5 Russia became involved in an 
unlucky war with Japan : she had no strength left for another 
Balkan venture. Austria was acting only at her best friend's 
suggestions, and France was soon too embroiled with Ger- 
many over Morocco to have any plans for reforming the 
Levant. The Armenian villages were "peaceful." In 
Macedonia indeed Greeks, Bulgars and Serbs were recipro- 
cally cutting throats, and the ambassadors were reminding the 
padishah of the need of drastic innovations. But he no longer 
feared any ambassador but the German, and the Macedonian 
problem for decades had been very serious but never acute. 
The padishah, now aging, still lived however in constant terror 
of assassination, and absurd precautions were taken at the 
palace to prevent his contact with any dangerous visitor : but 
fear for one's life is a regular perquisite of an Oriental mon- 
arch. A horde of dancing girls worthy of Solomon comforted 

i Harriot, "The Eastern Question," p. 359. 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 283 

his declining days : and countless black eunuchs and ministers 
of pleasure assured him that he was the terror of the Chris- 
tians, the hope of the Moslems and the admiration of the entire 
world. Then suddenly the ground opened at Abdul Hamid's 
feet. First he found his power jeopardized; then he was 
abruptly flung from the throne. 

If the "Red Sultan" had been the only tyrant in Turkey 
he might have kept his position, but men like William II 's 
imperial "brother" cannot maintain their sway without a 
whole train of ministering spirits, each making the most of 
his own field of power. There were Turkish begs and pashas 
who were relatively high-minded, humane and honest men, but 
such persons Abdul the Damned could not trust and seldom 
placed in office. To fill his vizierates, ministries and pasha- 
liks he had to summon Levantine adventurers, slippery scoun- 
drels of the most depraved type who loved their master only 
because he let half the public money stick in their fingers. 
Since to report a "conspiracy" was about the surest method 
of winning imperial favor, espionage, false charges, arbitrary 
imprisonment, and even secret executions were every-day 
perils even for the most aristocratic and loyal Ottomans. The 
methods of some of Abdul Hamid's chief myrmidons were as 
remarkable as their master's. It is reported that a certain 
high pasha required suddenly 200,000 francs ($40,000). He 
therefore invited a wealthy Constantinople Greek merchant 
to visit him in his palace. The poor man came, innocently 
expecting to be consulted about a government loan. Once in 
the building the pasha informed his amazed guest that he ex- 
pected a gift of the money, and that the Christian would not 
leave the palace alive unless the sum were paid. The pasha's 
servants, with leveled revolvers, forced the Greek to write out 
a check on his bank, and held him prisoner until a messenger 
brought back the cash. These were very primitive financial 
expedients, and while this particular Christian was perhaps 
helpless, many Turkish victims of similar deeds were not so 
impotent. They had no foreign power to plead in their be- 
half ; therefore they turned the more briskly to conspiracy. 

For a long time there had been a party of Ottomans known 



284 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

commonly as the " Young Turks." This band had been con- 
sidered by the diplomats as rather harmless dreamers. They 
believed that Abdul Hamid 's misrule was ruining the empire, 
and paving the way for a final conquest by Russia. They 
wished for the revival of the still-born "Constitution of 
1876," and for the introduction of various Western reforms 
and innovations as the last hope of saving their native land 
from ruin. In the time of their propaganda they announced 
many high-sounding humanitarian propositions which, in the 
days of their power, they were never to execute. The "Young 
Turk" movement was, however, in its first stages a genuinely 
liberal movement, grafted upon the Orient by men who often 
mistook program for performance. 

Abdul Hamid of course detested and dreaded these "Young 
Turks," some of whose leaders came from the highest Otto- 
man families. Those whom he could not arrest fled to Geneva, 
Berlin and Paris where, as exiles, they imbibed atheism and 
absinthe, and acquired a little thicker veneer of West 
European notions. They published a small paper, issued 
petitions to the courts of Europe and made the "Red Sultan" 
spend a great deal of money keeping spies after them. But 
while the spies were busy in Paris, the Young Turks were busy 
in Saloniki. They understood perfectly that no petty bomb 
outrages nor flash-in-the-pan demonstrations would overthrow 
the tyrant. The misrule of the sultan was disgusting wider 
and wider circles of Ottomans, but he still kept around him 
some regiments of highly paid troops who guaranteed him 
against any ordinary outbreak in the capital. At Saloniki, 
however, lay the powerful Third Army Corps : — ill-paid, rest- 
less and very good material for conspiracy. Upon this force 
the Young Turks' "Committee of Union and Progress" 
worked from 1906 to 1908, and then, with very few prelimi- 
naries, at Saloniki in July, 1908, they suddenly proclaimed 
again the Constitution of 1876, and started for Constantinople 
with the Third and also the Second Army Corps at their backs. 

Abdul Hamid had been caught completely unawares. His 
force at Constantinople was inadequate. He was not sure of 
the troops in Asia. With astounding promptitude he seemed 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 285 

to throw up the struggle and transform himself into a liberal, 
constitutional monarch. The censorship of the press was 
abolished, the constitution put in full force, and a chamber of 
280 deputies was ordered convened, to be elected by all the 
male citizens (whatever their faith) of the entire Ottoman 
empire. 

For a moment it seemed as if the age of miracles had re- 
turned. In the regions of the recent massacres Moslem ulemas 
publicly embraced and proclaimed their brotherhood with 
Christian priests and Jewish rabbis. Delegations of citizens 
called on American missionaries to request a precise meaning 
of the thing called "liberty," which they were about to put 
into effect. The Young Turks were delighted. "Hence- 
forth," cried Enver Bey, 1 one of their leaders, "we are all 
brothers ! There are no longer Bulgars, Greeks, Rumanians, 
Jews, Moslems ; under the blue sky we are all equal : we glory 
in the name of being Ottomans ! ' ' 

The victorious party of course seized at once all the govern- 
ment offices. The favorites of Abdul Hamid were justly 
obliged to disgorge. One of his ministers, who had been in 
power only 18 months, was found to have secreted in his 
house $850,000 of the public money. The new parliament 
was elected with a great show of zeal for liberty and equality ; 
but of course the assembly was composed of men utterly with- 
out political experience, and despite the talk of treating all 
races alike, the Christians complained that the districts had 
been gerrymandered in the Moslem interest. The Young 
Turkish managing committee was the real power behind the 
throne. It dictated the acts of the ministers and the bills laid 
before the parliament. For the moment its decisions seemed 
law. 

But Abdul Hamid, crafty spider, had only made conces- 
sions that he might bide his time. 2 Against the Young Turks 

1 This same chieftain later seems to have been largely responsible for 
the slaughter or miserable deaths of over 1,000,000 Armenians in 
1915-16. 

2 The new Parliament had been assembled December 10, 1908. In his 
speech at the opening the sultan blandly said that he had dissolved the 
original parliament temporarily "until the education of the people had 



286 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

were rallying all the noxious elements that had battened on the 
fallen regime. Also the tires of Ottoman conservatism were 
being awakened — were not Enver Bey and his peers ruining 
the faithful with strange doctrines learned among the giaours, 
and by practices utterly strange to the Prophet and all the 
holy imams? The "Red Sultan " had still an ample privy 
purse, and he used it. A serious massacre of the Armenians 
took place at Adana in Cilicia, probably in order to kindle 
the fanaticism of the faithful. The eunuchs and pages of 
the Yildiz-Kiosk did their master's bidding, spreading dis- 
affection for the new regime through Constantinople. On 
April 13, 1909, a counter revolution shook the capital. The 
sultan's troops seized the parliament house; the liberal grand 
vizier resigned to save his life; the minister of justice w 7 as 
murdered, and Abdul Hamid magnanimously issued a "par- 
don" for all the acts of his zealous soldiery. 

Those of the Young Turks who still lived fled the city for 
their lives, but they were not long absent. The "Committee 
of Union and Progress" at Saloniki promptly took charge of 
the situation, and the w r hole European army, save the "Red 
Sultan's" corrupted regiments, obeyed its orders to march on 
the capital. 

On April 25, the Saloniki army entered Constantinople. 
Some of the mutineers pleaded for mercy. "Have you 
brought us the old man's head?" sternly demanded the attack- 
ing general, — a demand, however, which was not finally in- 
sisted upon. Five hours of fierce fighting were required 
before the rebel troops in some of the barracks could be bom- 
barded into submission. Abdul the Damned had played his 
game and the dice had fallen against him. To save his power 
no hand was openly raised by the German ambassador nor by 
the w r ar-lord in Berlin. The moment the sultan had lost his 
grip on the situation and his ability to serve them, Prussian 
interest in his cause had waned. "Our relations with Turkey 
are not of a sentimental nature," Prince von Biilow, the 
kaiser's chancellor, asserted a little later, most pithily. Pos- 

been brought to a sufficiently high level by the extension of instruction 
throughout the empire." 



ABDUL HAMID, "THE RED SULTAN" 287 

sibly, however, German influence was exercised to keep the 
sultan from the executioner. All through the attack and 
the bombardment, the padishah is said to have sat on his divan, 
pale and biting his nails, with bevies of terrified slave girls 
cowering and shrieking around him. Now the Young Turks 
were determined to take no chance of a second counter-revolu- 
tion. On April 27th, the parliament met again to consider 
the question of the throne. The fetvah (solemn opinion) of 
the Sheikh-ul-Islam, declaring Abdul Hamid unworthy to 
rule, was read. The parliament unanimously voted him de- 
posed, and his younger brother, Mohammed V, was ' ' girt with 
the sword of Osman" and summoned to reign. 

The "Red Sultan" for hours had been in keen animal ter- 
ror. Now he was greatly relieved when told he might keep his 
life, and depart to Saloniki to a comfortable villa, still solaced 
by a considerable number of his harem ladies. On the 28th 
of April he was so transferred. Had he stayed in Constanti- 
nople he might have seen some forty of his instruments — 
breeders of the recent mutiny, powerful eunuchs or extor- 
tionate ministers, dangling from nooses as they were hanged in 
full view on the bridges and streets of the capital. William 
II 's "brother" had ceased to be a useful ally. 

The new sultan was amiable and harmless. Being the 
presumptive heir to the throne, he had been kept in gilded 
imprisonment through the whole of his brother's reign, and he 
declared that "he had not read a newspaper for twenty 
years." x 

The Young Turks, however, had found in Mohammed V pre- 
cisely what they wanted — a figurehead, without force or wit to 
govern, and who owed everything to their intervention. 

Enver Bey and his associates now had grasped the entire 
government. It seemed as if the German alliance with Turkey 
had been dissolved with the downfall of Abdul Hamid. 
Speedily the Young Turks were to discover that it is easier to 
draw up abstract programs for making an Oriental Empire 

i Doubtless Abdul Hamid prided himself on not having had his 
brother strangled, as had been the frequent Ottoman usage to stop all 
possible competition for the throne. 



288 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

into a modern parliamentary state, than to execute those pro- 
grams smoothly and happily; and as their difficulties in- 
creased they were to discover again the need for the friend- 
ship of Berlin. For the instant, however, the prospects 
opened fair before them, and all the more trustful liberals in 
Europe echoed the applause that followed the new sultan's 
announcement : ' ' The safety and happiness of the country 
depend on the constant and serious application of the constitu- 
tional regime, which is in conformity with the sacred law, as 
well as with the principles of civilization." 

Noble sentiments — but the subjects of Mohammed V were to 
see greater wars and woes than the subjects of Abdul the Great 
Assassin. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE AND ITS DISCORDANT SUBJECTS 

THE very first fact with which any student of Austria- 
Hungary is confronted is that he is dealing with a state 
and not with a nation. Nationalities are plentiful within the 
limits of the empire — more nationalities and more languages 
than in any other European state except Russia — but there 
is no Austro-Hungarian nation. When the emperor wishes 
to address a manifesto to his subjects it is not "to my people" 
that he speaks, but "to my peoples." Nor have these nation- 
alities anything in common except their government. Race, 
religion, all that tends to make nationalities different from one 
another are present. And so whether we apply to it the 
terms of one of its severe critics, 1 "a ramshackle empire," or 
describe it, as its friends do, as an exceedingly hopeful experi- 
ment in racial federalization, we are necessarily brought back 
to the conclusion that the Austria of to-day is not a nation but 
a government functioning over a group of struggling nation- 
alities each differing from the other in race, religion and meth- 
ods of life. 

Nor does the Austrian difficulty end there. In their strug- 
gle with each other the nationalities look not merely to their 
own strength for aid but also to their brothers outside the 
borders of Austria-Hungary. The German looks to Ger- 
many, the Slav to Serbia and Russia for assistance in their 
hopes of strengthening their position within the Dual Empire. 2 
The result is that this question has been too often regarded by 
the Austrian statesmen as a question of foreign policy to be 
settled with these outside powers rather than an internal ques- 
tion to be settled within the empire. Moreover, the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire has been constantly endeavoring to expand 

i Mr. David Lloyd George. 

2 The term commonly applied to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

289 



290 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

either its territory or its influence, at first in Italy and Ger- 
many, and more lately in the Balkan peninsula. And these 
attempts at expansion have brought it into acute conflict: in 
the first case with Italy, France and Prussia: in the second 
case with Russia. So the Dual Empire, whether on the defen- 
sive or offensive, has always made foreign policy its chief aim, 
and has given far too little attention to the pressing questions 
at home. There are some nations which suffer from too little 
attention to foreign policy ; Austria seems to have suffered 
from giving it too much. 

Finally the Austro-Hungarian Empire shares the fate of 
all empires on the borderland between two civilizations. 
"Asia," says a Viennese proverb, "begins on the Ring- 
strasse, ' ' ' and there seems to be an element of truth in the 
saying. The traveller who goes from the Tyrol to Bosnia or 
to northwestern Hungary passes into a different world. One 
is European, the other is Oriental, and all the efforts of the 
rulers to Europeanize their subjects and to mitigate this dif- 
ference have only partially succeeded. And this difference 
has increased still further the dissension within the Dual 
Empire and prevented the formation of a united nation. 

This is Austria, a state, a foreign policy, an army, a ruler, 
but never a nation. How did such a state come to be formed? 
To answer this question we must go back into the late Middle 
Ages, to the period when the old Holy Roman Empire of the 
Germans was struggling with the non-German races on its 
borders, Slavs and Magyars. To provide for defence against 
these races was formed the so-called East March — the kernel 
of modern Austria. Originally purely German, it extended to 
the south to take in the Slavs along the northern Adriatic. 
But the genesis of modern Austria begins with a certain Ferdi- 
nand, brother of Charles V, whom Luther faced at Worms in 
1521. By a fortunate marriage and by equally fortunate 
deaths he acquired Hungary and Bohemia. 

But he acquired something in addition to these territories, 
he acquired a Turkish war among his possessions in Hungary. 

i The principal street of Vienna. 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 291 

And for the next two centuries Austria waged almost unceas- 
ing war against the Turks. At first the struggle went rather 
against them; in 1529 and again in 1683, the Turks nearly 
captured Vienna and settled the problem of Austria in a 
Turkish sense. But after 1683 the war went steadily in 
Austria's favor. She gradually extended down the Danube 
and into the Balkans, taking under her dominion large num- 
bers of Slavs who welcomed her armies as deliverers from the 
hated oppression of the Turk. 

In 1914 they were singing in the streets of Vienna a song 
commemorating the exploits of the great Austrian general, 
Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had led the Austrian armies 
during one of the most successful periods of these wars. 
Formerly many a Slav has joined in this song because he 
realized that it was this Prince Eugene who had delivered his 
race from the Turk. But these voices have long been still. 
Because they have discovered that they have merely ex- 
changed one set of bonds for another, the cramping rule of the 
Ottoman for the equally cramping rule of the German and 
the Magyar, they have ceased to celebrate these Austrian vic- 
tories over the Turk. All the opportunity that Austria has 
enjoyed, all the tragedy of her failure to realize it, lies in this 
situation. 

And thus was formed a state which never was the expres- 
sion of a nation, a mere machine, a thing in which the breath 
of national life has never really stirred. It was given the 
great opportunity to reconcile Slav and Magyar and German, 
East and West, and, on the whole, it has failed. Opportuni- 
ties countless it has had; some it has utilized — enough to 
tantalize yet not to satisfy; but the great majority it has 
left unutilized. It has, at best, but partially fulfilled its 
destiny and now it comes for its accounting before the 
judgment-bar of the nations. 

The Austrian problem, then, is, at bottom, a problem of 
nationalities. What are these nationalities, their character- 
istics and their location in the Empire? Roughly speaking, 
they are comprised in five grand divisions, the German, the 



292 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

Magyar, the Slav, the Roumanian and the Italian. Of Slavs 
there are numerous subdivisions, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, 
Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. But the fundamental 
characteristics of them all are the same, and for introductory 
purposes we may group them together. 

First of all in our study of the nationalities is the German, 
the original Austrian. They settled mainly in the upper basin 
of the Danube along the north and west borders of Bohemia. 
There is also a little island of Teutondom in western Hungary 
formed from the descendants of sturdy German settlers sent 
during the Middle Ages to hold this region against the Slav, 
but today lost in the surrounding sea of Hungarians and 
Roumanians. These Germans are not the Germans of Prus- 
sia. They view life with a less serious eye, love the good 
things of this world, and are in many ways more charming 
and less efficient than their racial brethren to the north. In 
the past they have done much for music and art; even to- 
day they are contributing their share, and they have made 
Vienna a place of great charm to the casual visitor. But 
they appear to have abandoned commerce and industry to 
the Jew; statesmanship they have left far too often to the 
Pole and the Magyar. Children of this world, they are to- 
day probably the best embodiment of real German "gemiith- 
Uchkeit." Many a critic of the Dual Monarchy has been 
softened by an hour in the charming society of an Austrian 
officer. And yet their easy-going ways seem to have proved 
their ruin. In the last fifty years they have undoubtedly 
lost the direction of the internal affairs of the Empire to 
the Magyar, and the control of foreign policy to their more 
ruthless and efficient brothers of the German Empire. Like- 
able though they may be, it is to be feared that their faults 
will greatly hinder them in taking the control of a new and 
regenerated Austria. 

If you travel by the Danube steamer from Vienna to 
Budapest you pass, about half way, the citadel of Press- 
burg. This old frontier fortress of the Hungarian kingdom 
may be taken as the boundary where one passes from the land 
of the Germans into that of the Magyars. From that point 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 293 

on this race inhabits the great Hungarian plain, until, in 
its western part, it gives way to the Roumanian. Descend- 
ants of a wild, nomadic race which dashed itself against 
western Europe in the tenth century and then recoiled into 
the Danube plain, the Hungarian people have retained some 
of the fire and energy and some of the wildness, as well, of 
their youth. Probably they have never been completely 
Europeanized. And perhaps in their exoticism lies the charm 
they always seem to possess for the native of west Europe 
and America. Their nobility, widely-travelled and often 
widely-read, simple in their tastes, gentlemen of the world 
in the best sense of the term, seem a survival of the old 
feudal and patriarchal days. The peasants are energetic, and 
in the main good farmers and householders. "With his bril- 
liancy and charm, and with an almost oriental suppleness 
of mind, the Magyar seems a born politician, as the other 
nationalities in the Empire have found to their cost. Proud 
of his nationality and of its traditions, determined that it 
shall be the directing force in the kingdom, he has carried 
on a policy toward the other nationalities — a policy to* be 
treated in detail later — which has been one of the causes 
of the present war. Rarely passive, active and aggressive, 
the Magyars have fought their way to their present position 
in the Dual Empire and they mean to maintain it at all 
costs. 

From the two ruling nationalities, German and Magyar, 
we pass to the ruled nationalities, the Slav, the Roumanian 
and the Italian. To link together the Slavs as one nationality 
involves a certain stretching of the term, for, even yet, it is 
doubtful if the Czechs of Bohemia feel their kinship with 
the Croats or Serbs in Hungary, and in at least one case, that 
of the Poles and Ruthenians, the feeling is still decidedly an- 
tagonistic. But it is notable during the last few years that 
all these Slav races in the empire have been uniting in their 
common grievances, feeling more and more their racial kin- 
ship and more and more inclining to work together for com- 
mon ends. The Czech banks of Prague have subsidized the 
common enterprises of the Croat and Serb in Dalmatia, and 



294 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the people of Prague contributed heavily to the Serbian Red 
Cross during the period of the two Balkan Wars, considering 
the Serbian victories as those of the Slav race as a whole. 
This is that movement called Pan-Slavism, which will le 
discussed at greater length presently. Here it may be cited 
merely as a proof of increasing Slav solidarity. 

Who are tnese Slavs and whence came they? History 
tells us but little, for they pushed into Europe unheralded 
and unsung in the centuries immediately following the fall 
of Rome. They were evidently of a low grade of civilization, 
hunters and fishermen, wanderers on the face of the earth, 
with few if any political bonds to confine them, individualists 
by choice. They always seem to have lacked, to some ex- 
tent, the ability to organize, although it may be said that this 
defect has been somewhat exaggerated by those who write 
concerning this race. Dreamy, rather impractical, they may 
have contributed less than their share to the material side 
of life — although this may very likely be due to the economic 
circumstances in which they have been placed, for, when given 
the opportunity, some of them have attained eminence in these 
very fields. On the other hand they have probably contrib- 
uted more than their share to music and art. Generally they 
appear as an undeveloped race of great possibilities, but what 
these possibilities are and what their future will be is hard 
to prophesy. 

Geographically the Slavs form a fringe along the northern 
and southern borders of the empire, although they have 
pushed many outposts into the central portion as well. 
Numerically they are the leading race in the empire, having 
a larger population than the two ruling races, German and 
Magyar, taken together. The majority are Roman Catholics. 

The eastern part of Hungary is occupied, in the main, 
by Roumanians. They seeped in across the Carpathians some 
time during the later Middle Ages, and ever since the thir- 
teenth century seem to have made up the peasant class in 
this district, 1 " first as serfs, later as political helots" — to 
quote the characterization of Mr. Seton Watson. They claim 

i Seton Watson, "Roumania and the War," p. 35. 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 295 

to be the descendants of the Latin colonists left by Trajan 
in the Roman province of Dacia ; actually they are probably a 
mixed race from many origins and their Roman antecedents 
are much more certain as to their language than their blood. 
They are still agriculturists for the most part, and, although 
greatly hindered in their development, have done much 
through organized self-help. 

Last among the nationalities come the Italians, who are 
almost entirely found in the coast cities along the northern 
and eastern shores of the Adriatic. Originally they came 
as colonists, sometimes under the control of Venice, some- 
times independent, in order to trade with the people of the 
back country, and they brought with them an Italian culture 
that has never died out, even though the Italians today 
are a minority among the population. Traders and culture- 
bearers they are still, these lost children of Italy, living, for 
the most part, in the cities which are little Italian fortresses 
in the surrounding hosts of Slavdom. But one after another 
these fortresses have been falling, and it appears that now 
the Italians must undergo the melancholy fate of those who, 
in a strange land, give it their culture and then are swal- 
lowed up. On the northern shore things are better for the 
Italians, but in Dalamatia the future appears to belong 
to the Slav. 1 

Such are the nationalities in this polyglot empire. Every 
manner of race, every manner of religion are represented. 
The task of welding these discordant peoples into one organ- 
ism might well defy the abilities of a statesman. Let us see 
how the Austro-Hungarian statesmen have solved it. 

The present government of Austria-Hungary is based on 
the so-called Ausgleich, drawn up in 1867. By it Austria and 
Hungary were united together in a loose federation which 
left each of the parties practically independent in their in- 
ternal affairs. Outside of the fact that the emperor of 
Austria is also King of Hungary, the bonds of union between 

i Those who read Italian may find these conclusions stated at greater 
length and with attendant proof in V. Gayda, "L'ltalia d'oitre Contine." 
For other discussion of these Italians see p. 157. 



296 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the two dominions consist of the joint ministries of Foreign 
Affairs, Finance and War and the so-called "Delegations." 
The latter are elected bodies, one from the Parliament of 
Austria and one from that of Hungary which convene in 
Vienna and Budapest alternately, confer with each other 
in writing, and only meet together after three exchanges 
in writing have proved unavailing and then only to vote, 
not to debate. All in all they leave the impressions of two 
independent powers negotiating with each other and not 
that of a common parliament for two parts of the same state. 
Economic matters, such as railways, tariffs, etc., are settled 
by treaties, having life for only ten years, and each renewal 
has been accompanied by no little strife. 

It is easy to see then that such internal questions as eco- 
nomic reform, treatment of the nationalities and so forth will 
not be dealt with directly by the Austro-Hungarian state but 
will be left to the separate action of the two parts, Austria 
and Hungary. It is true that every now and then Franz 
Josef intervened in the question of nationalities, and in Aus- 
tria he succeeded, to some extent, in bringing in a more healthy 
spirit in the treatment of this question. But in Hungary this 
intervention has been mostly a rapping of the table to bring 
the dominant Magyar party into line on other questions. 
1 ' Constitutional to the point of injustice, ' ' x Franz Josef 
left the Hungarians the settlement of their own internal prob- 
lems, within the limits laid down by the Ausgleich. And so 
the study of the treatment in Austria-Hungary of the problem 
of nationalities falls into two divisions: the treatment of 
the problem in Austria and the treatment in Hungary. 

In Austria the problem has mainly centered in the treat- 
ment to be accorded to the Czechs of Bohemia. When the 
Magyars were given favored treatment in 1867 these Slavs 
of Bohemia confidently expected that they would receive 
the same, and that a practically autonomous Czech govern- 
ment would be set up in Bohemia. Four things appear to 
have prevented this. First of all was the dislike on the 
part of the Austrian government to split up further the em- 

i Skeed, "The Hapsburg Monarchy," p. 30. 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 291 

pire unless it was necessary. Second was the refusal of th 
German minority in Bohemia to allow the erection of wha 
would be a predominantly Slav state in which they woul< 
have to play a secondary role. These same Germans, wh 
view with the utmost complacency the crushing out of Sla 
majorities in Austria and in Hungary, wax exceedingly elc 
quent over the nationalistic wrongs the German minority i: 
Bohemia would undergo if the Czechs were given control there 
The Berlin government appears to share this feeling to th 
utmost, and in 1867 and later it seems to have used all it 
influence and even threats to secure the defeat of this scheme 
Third in the list of reasons was the attitude of the Magyar* 
Having won for themselves a privileged position in the en 
pire they had no intention of sharing it with the Czech; 
And so they joined with the Germans in opposition. Finall 
the Czechs, at this period, appear to have lacked the state* 
manship shown by the Magyars. The latter, led by Dea 
and Andrassy, were able to seize every opportunity for gaii 
while the Czechs seemed unable to do this. Thus, while th 
Czechs were far better entitled to the control in Bohemi 
than were the Magyars in Hungary, they failed in securing th 
desired position and were left under the control of the Gei 
mans of Austria. 

But they had no intention of remaining in this subordinal 
position. Instinctively they seem to have felt their need 
better education, and a stronger economic position within tl 
empire. And these two things they set out to secur 
Schools were established throughout Bohemia, a Czech liter* 
ture was encouraged, and an organized system of mutu* 
help did much to better their economic position. Pragu 
once German, became a purely Czech city. German, formerl 
the language of culture, was more and more replaced by tl 
use of the native language. In brief, Bohemia has witnesse 
during the last forty years a tremendous Czech renaissaru 
that has left that race socially, economically and culturally tl 
master of Bohemia. 

Politically, however, this was not true. For the state w* 
still a power in the hands of the Germans and they used 



298 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ruthlessly to hold this Slav movement in check. The Slav- 
Czech language was not placed on an equality with German 
in the courts and in government business, and when an at- 
tempt was made to do this by Count Badeni in 1897 it broke 
down, owing to German opposition and, it would appear, 
to threats from Berlin. 

The question, however, did not end there. Rebuffed in 
their attempts to secure their ends by legal means, the Czechs 
took refuge in systematic parliamentary obstruction. Sev- 
eral deputies gained great proficiency in speaking twelve hours 
or so at a stretch; others became experts in hurling ink- 
bottles and other missiles at their opponents. The Germans 
retorted in kind and the sessions of the Austrian Parliament 
were one continuous uproar. Finally, in sheer desperation, 
the government decided to bring in a bill conferring universal 
suffrage throughout Austria. Up to this time the suffrage 
in Austria had practically been limited to the property-hold- 
ing classes. In 1906 it was agreed to throw all seats open 
to manhood suffrage and it was hoped that, by this method, 
the nationalities other than German would be satisfied by the 
added power their numbers would bring them, and also that 
social and economic questions, hitherto untreated in an as- 
sembly elected by property holders, would come to the fore 
and throw the nationalistic question into the background. 

In this hope the Austrian government does not appear to 
have been wholly deceived; while the non-German nationali- 
ties had some grievances with the districting in the new 
Parliament, they seem to have been willing to drop these and 
give manhood suffrage a fair trial. And so the nationalistic 
question faded, at least relatively, into the background. On 
the other hand, social and economic questions received far 
better treatment and much useful work was done. The 
Austrian half of the Empire appeared to have at least started 
on the road to recovery. 

But the nationalistic question was not dead in Austria. 
Old memories continued to fan the flames of racial strife and 
many years would have been necessary before a complete 
racial truce could have been established. The Czechs, con- 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 299 

scious of their power, were agitating for a privileged and even 
an autonomous position for Bohemia, and intended to secure 
it. The Germans were discontented and threatening separa- 
tion from Austria and union with Germany. Time and pa- 
tience were necessary, — and instead Austria-Hungary plunged 
into war. 

While Austria was slowly progressing toward a better treat- 
ment of the problem of nationalities, the treatment of this 
problem in Hungary is one long, sordid series of acts of 
oppression committed by the Magyars against the other na- 
tionalities of the kingdom. A minority in the land they 
govern, but proud of their past and determined to remain 
the ruling caste, the Magyar has systematically refused to 
the other nationalities any right of expression except through 
Magyar channels. "Magyarization," they call the policy 
adopted, and the word sums up a series of measures taken 
to stifle the language and literature of the other races for the 
benefit of the Magyars, and to cripple their economic pros- 
perity in order to contribute to Magyar comfort and Magyar 
wealth. 

In 1867 it had been agreed in the "Ausgleich" that the 
non-Magyar nationalities should be protected in all their 
rights. Deak, the ablest and the noblest of the Hungarian 
statesmen, was determined that this so-called "Law of Na- 
tionalities" should be carried out. But he was in ill-health 
and soon was forced to relinquish his hold on affairs, and 
other men, able but unscrupulous and aflame with the pride 
of race, took up his work. In their hands, the "Law of 
Nationalities" soon became a dead letter, "Magyarization" 
replaced the racial federation Deak had hoped for, and the 
long series of acts of racial oppression, which were to con- 
tribute so much to the present war, was started, and con- 
tinued without a break down to 1914. 

The story has been often told and here needs to be indicated 
only in its main lines. Magyarization strikes the traveler 
at every turn in the Hungarian kingdom. Street-names are 
posted in Magyar, place-names are at least officially Magyar- 



300 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ized, time-tables are in Magyar, as are the tickets you buy, 
and Magyar is the language used by the railroad staff, who 
luckily also know French and a little English, sometimes, as 
well. Magyar is the language of the courts and though 
interpreters are allowed they must be paid for at the private 
expense of the client, a grievous burden on poor litigants. 
A petition may be handed in in some non-Magyar language, 
but the reply will always come back in the tongue of the 
dominant nationality. 1 

And just as Magyar is insisted on as the language of the 
state and society, so is every effort made to stamp out all 
non-Magyar education and culture. The schools of the other 
nationalities in Hungary have been rigorously dealt with. 
In 1868 the Slovaks possessed three upper schools, founded 
and supported by their own efforts, in 1875 these were closed 
and have never been re-opened. Their elementary schools 
have been reduced from 1921 in 1869 to 440 in 1911, despite 
a growth in population. 2 Indeed had schools been allotted 
in proportion to population the non-Magyar nationalities 
should have 48 per cent., while, as a matter of fact, they 
now possess 19 per cent, of the elementary schools and be- 
tween 7 and 8 per cent, of the upper schools. Naturally the 
non-Magyar population is uneducated, a prey to Magyar 
wiles and Magyar intimidation. 

Pass from schools to the press. Any paper which raises 
its voice against the present state of things is silenced. 
Journalists are imprisoned and fined, and journals suppressed. 
Between April 1906 and August 1908 sentences were passed 
on non-Magyars for press offences totaling 181 years, 3 months 
imprisonment and fines of 99,000 crowns. 3 A free press is 
difficult in such a land. 

Yet, it may be asked, why do these nationalities not unite 
to use their numbers in gaining control of the Parliament? 

i Even tombstones in Budapest may bear no inscriptions save in 
Magyar. 

2 For these and the following figures I am indebted to Seton-Watson, 
"German, Slav and Magyar," pages 40, 41. 

3 Ibid., p. 44. 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 301 

In the first place the franchise is mediaeval, giving undue 
weight to property and education, of which the Magyars have 
by far the greater share. Again the districting, originally 
bad, has been made worse by systematic gerrymandering. 
Finally corruption, intimidation and even the use of troops 
at the polls has been carried on to such an extent that a fair 
election is an impossibility. Out of the 413 deputies in the 
Hungarian parliament, the non-Magyar nationalities are en- 
titled, through their population, to 198 : actually they have 
never held over 25. Under these circumstances there is little 
hope in political action. 

Also, if any political leader or any political party rises 
to challenge the present system, woe betide them in a land 
where habeas corpus is unknown and "conspiracy" is a flexi- 
ble term on which to find an indictment. The vengeance of 
the government follows them even beyond the tomb, for monu- 
ments to non-Magyar leaders have been often prohibited and 
funds collected for that purpose confiscated. Even funeral 
processions of such leaders have been interfered with if, 
in the opinion of the government, they are being made the 
occasion of nationalistic demonstrations. 

The whole Magyar racial policy may be summed up in the 
words of two of the leading Magyar statesmen. The first is 
the former Premier, Koloman Szell. Speaking in 1908, he 
declared that "this country must first be preserved as a 
Magyar country, and then it must be cultured, rich, enlight- 
ened and progressive. " The second is from Count Stephen 
Tisza, premier when the war broke out. "A cardinal condi- 
tion," he stated, "of the enjoyment of rights by other na- 
tionalities is that the citizens of other nationalities should 
recognize unreservedly that this state is the Magyar state." 
Such are the principles of Magyar government. 

Such a situation of affairs could not last. For many years 
the Slav and Roumanian nationalities, poor, because of the 
denial of economic advantages, uneducated, because their 
schools had been closed, were held down by the iron hand 
of Budapest. But gradually they began to emancipate them- 
selves. Many of them went to America, made their little 



302 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

"pile" and returned to buy out the estates of the magnates 
and work for the emancipation of their nationality. Better 
educated, they have formed the leaders in this recovery, teach- 
ing and inspiring the masses to hope for better things. 
Sooner or later trouble was bound to occur, and the Magyars 
seem to have dimly realized this. In the face of this move- 
ment and under pressure from Vienna a new franchise law 
was brought in in 1908 which, although granting but few 
concessions, was at least an opening wedge. Time might 
have alleviated the difficulties, but it was too late. In 1912 
came the Balkan wars which aroused the entire Slav race, and 
in 1914 followed the world-struggle. 

But it was in one corner of Hungary that the torch was 
kindled that was to set the world aflame. Croatia-Slavonia — 
the land of the South Slavs — had always possessed a local 
government of its own and this government had been con- 
firmed to it by the agreement with Hungary in 1868. This 
compromise, originally not ungenerous, was twisted and dis- 
torted at Budapest until it became a tool for oppression. 
According to the agreement railways were to be built jointly 
by the two parts of the "Crown of St. Stephen" and to be 
their common property. But while Hungary has a thick net- 
work of railroads, Croatia-Slavonia is forced to be content 
with one poor line which has never been extended by a single 
branch. Railway tariffs have been shamelessly manipulated 
to the benefit of Hungary and the detriment of Croatia- 
Slavonia. Finally by the compromise it was agreed that 
the governor or ban of Croatia should be appointed by Buda- 
pest, and the Hungarians made use of this opportunity to 
endow Croatia-Slavonia with a gentleman who could teach 
much to the most corrupt of American politicians, Count 
Khuen-Hedervary. For twenty years (1883-1903) the ban 
made use of every variety of electoral corruption and fraud, 
official pressure, and intimidation. And for the time being 
he was aided by one very important factor in the problem. 

Croatia-Slavonia was inhabited by two branches of the 
South Slav race, the Croats, the original settlers, and the 
Serbs, who had come in from Serbia during the eighteenth 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 303 

century. The former were Roman Catholic, the latter Greek 
Catholic, and thus racial and religious differences prevented 
a united front on the part of the population towards the ex- 
ploitation and misgovernment of Budapest. And Khuen- 
Hedervary seized on this situation and used it to the utmost. 
But even before his corrupt rule was over, it was becoming 
evident that this difference was dying out and that the two 
parts of the South-Slav nationality were beginning to draw 
together for common defence. 

Let us pass from Croatia-Slavonia for the moment to an- 
other unhappy country to the south. The diplomacy of 
Andrassy had given Austria the administration of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, two provinces formerly Turkish, but al- 
most entirely occupied by South Slavs. The occupation 
commenced with a revolt of the population, and it is hardly 
too much to say that this revolt has never really ceased since 
1878. Not that the rule of the Austrians has been a bad 
one: for it has provided schools, and railways, has cleaned 
and ornamented the cities, has provided industries for the 
people and, in general, has done much to better the material 
and bodily welfare of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
But the situation was much the same as that of Italy in the 
early 1850 's: a situation that was summed up by Daniele 
Manin in the words: "We do not want Austria to reform, 
we want Austria to get out." For these inhabitants are, al- 
most to a man, Serbs and, as Serbs, they desire to be united 
with Serbia and not with Austria even though, in a material 
sense, the Austrian rule may be better for them. And they 
have expressed the faith that is in them by seizing their rifles 
and taking to the mountains, there to wage unceasing war 
against all things Austrian, good as well as bad. They are 
the soldiers of nationality, protesting, dying for a principle, 
for the right of a people to dispose of itself. Never has 
Austria completely subdued this revolt. Suppressed in one 
locality it appears in another : it inspires plots which have 
planned the death of Austrian governors and which finally 
claimed the heir to the Austrian throne. 

To return to Croatia-Slavonia, Khuen-Hedervary had been 



304 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

a failure; all his corruption, his gerrymandering, his in- 
timidation had not helped matters, indeed it had made them 
worse. Daily the religious and racial differences between the 
Croats and the Serbs were losing their importance, daily the 
two nationalities were becoming more united in their resist- 
ance to Budapest. In 1907 the Hungarian parliament be- 
gan to extend its policy of "Magyarization" to Croatia- 
Slavonia by insisting on the use of Magyar as a language on 
the railways of the province. At once Croats and Serbs 
united in opposition and the next year, despite every form 
of corruption and intimidation, their united party won a 
majorit} r in the diet of Croatia-Slavonia. 

In 1908 occurred the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina. The disastrous results of this act on the for- 
eign policy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have been de- 
scribed elsewhere, but the results on the internal .situation in 
the empire were equally bad. It inflamed the population of 
the annexed provinces to a revolt of despair, for it seemed to 
end, for ever, their dream of union to Serbia, while in 
Croatia-Slavonia the humiliation of a Slav state was a blow 
at pride of race. And this feeling of hatred was greatly 
deepened by certain events in the latter part of 1908 and dur- 
ing 1909. 

In the summer of 1908 the official press of Croatia-Slavonia 
worked up a ''Pan-Serb conspiracy/' aiming at rebellion and 
the union of the province with Servia. By the early part of 
1909, 58 persons, mostly obscure, were in prison, but the 
real aim of the whole business, the implication of members 
of the Croat-Serb party in the diet, proved a failure: no 
evidence could be found against them. And so the trial 
opened in March, 1909, and dragged its weary course until 
October, when 31 of these wretches were sentenced to varying 
prison terms. 

More sensational matter, however, followed. In March, 
1909, the t; Neue Freie Presse, ,? a newspaper of Vienna, 
published, over the signature of Professor Fried jung, the 
famous Austrian historian, charges against the leaders of this 
Croat-Serb party, backing up his charges with certain writ- 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 305 

ten documents. The Croat-Serb leaders retorted by bringing 
a libel action against Professor Fried jung and in the trial it 
was proved that these documents, which had been supplied by 
Aerenthal, the Austrian Foreign Minister, had been forged 
in the Austro-Hungarian legation at Belgrade. 1 The matter 
was hastily hushed up, but not before it had terribly damaged 
the reputation of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy and Austro- 
Hungarian government. 

In this fashion — amid constant quarrels and deadlocks be- 
tween the diet of Croatia-Slavonia which was now controlled 
by the Croat-Serb party, and the government of Budapest, 
things went on for three years. In the fall of 1912 the 
Balkan wars broke out, and the situation at once became 
critical. Hitherto the Slavs in the empire had but one great 
Slav power to appeal to, Russia, and this power they dreaded. 
But with the victories of Serbia there came to all the Slavs 
of the empire the feeling that they were no longer members 
of a mean and despised race, but of a race which could fight 
and could conquer. The Slavs of the empire gave their all 
to the Serbian Red Cross, and rejoiced in the Serbian vic- 
tories as though they had won them themselves. The Slav 
sailors on the Austrian flagship, blockading Montenegro in 
1913, decorated their ship on the news of the fall of Scutari: 
the very event they were there, if possible, to prevent. After 
the Balkan w r ars the Slav race had apparently "found its 
Piedmont, ' ' like a new Italy. 

"Serbian and Russian intrigues" thus the Austrian states- 
men described these events, for they failed to see that the 
real difficulty lay within their own borders, that these Slav 
nationalities had turned to Serbia and to Russia only because 
every attempt they had made to approach the Austro-Hun- 
garian Empire had been rebuffed. One does not need to 
hold a brief for either the Russian or Serbian policy in the 
Balkans in order to condemn the shortsightedness of the Aus- 
tro-Hungarian government. Yet that government refused 

i The minister to Serbia, Count Forgach, after a period of "retire- 
ment," returned to office, and as assistant minister of foreign affairs, 
aided in the Serbian ultimatum. 



306 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

to see the light. From the summer of 1913 to the summer of 
1914 their whole endeavor was to find a way to crush the 
Serbian state, whose intrigues, they claimed, were destroying 
the empire. Not a word of internal reform, although at the 
last moment, that might have saved the situation. For, 
argued the Austrian statesmen, if Serbia be crushed we can 
exploit our Slav subjects at our will. And so they delivered 
themselves, German, Slav, and Magyar, to be exploited by 
the Prussian. 

It is easy to point out the defects in the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire, but it was not all darkness. No one would, prob- 
ably, deny the conscientious devotion to duty of Franz Josef. 
Franz Ferdinand, his heir, seems to have harbored plans that 
might have redeemed the empire. 1 The present emperor ap- 
pears to have good intentions and, possibly, the ability, also, 
to execute them. Not as an able dynasty appear these Haps- 
burgs, but, on the whole, a conscientious one. The army, too, 
has been a force for unity. Far more democratic than that 
of Germany, it has been the education of many a peasant of 
Austria and Hungary in the primal duties of order, cleanli- 
ness and self-control. Finally economic factors, an indus- 
trial Austria, an agricultural Hungary, make for unity. But 
a dynasty, however good, an army, however democratic and 
efficient, and even economic ties do not make a nation. That 
can only be formed by the union of free peoples, in common 
endeavor in a common cause. No Austro-Hungarian nation 
can be based on the rule of German and Magyar over Slav 
and Roumanian and Italian. So long as this continues there 
will be a "question of Austria," internal troubles and, prob- 
ably, European wars. Dissolution of the empire is a far bet- 
ter solution than the continuance of the present situation. 

Yet may there not arise in Austria a statesman who will 
solve the problem and unite these nationalities into one na- 
tion? We in American who see men of every race taking 
their part in our national life, calling themselves Americans, 

i And the Austro-Hungarian court camarilla appear to have broken 
into his papers and even searched his pockets after his murder in 
Serajevo. 



THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE 307 

living as Americans, know that nationalities can be fused. 
Even now, at this eleventh hour of the night, it may not be 
too late for this statesman to arise. The future has noth- 
ing too good for the Austria-Hungary he will create. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 

AFTER the smoke of the Franco-Prussian War had rolled 
away, Europe found herself facing a new diplomatic 
situation. France was fallen from her old post as the pre- 
eminent power. Germany had taken her place, and for long 
statesmen hardly knew what to make of it. The power of 
the new Hohenzollern empire was obviously so great that 
any blundering attack upon it was likely to be resented with 
fearful results. Bismarck, however, did nothing to make 
the powers which had stood neutral in 1870 repent of their 
inaction. With Russia for some time he was friendly, w T ith 
England and Italy reasonably cordial, with Austria at least 
correct. He realized keenly, perhaps too keenly, that by 
taking Alsace-Lorraine he had relegated any genuine recon- 
ciliation with France to a distant future. Henceforth, when- 
ever Germany found herself in difficulties, right across the 
Vosges lay a nation of ill-wishers whom Teutons at least 
believed to be always ready to stab or strike. In view of 
this ''French mortgage" Bismarck's policy therefore seemed 
dictated along rather simple lines. He worked on three 
plausible hypotheses : 

I. That after the lessons of 1870-71 it was not likely 
France, without allies, would attack Germany, unless Ger- 
many foolishly reduced her armaments. Therefore the new 
Hohenzollern empire must remain armed to the teeth. 

II. A Republican system of government in France was 
likely to keep the "Grand Nation" faction-rent and divided, 
and on bad terms with the various great monarchies (espe- 
cially Russia) which might possibly help her. Therefore 
to keep France weak and isolated Bismarck deliberately dis- 
couraged attempts (very natural for Prussian monarchists) 

308 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 309 

to undermine the Third Republic. When Von Arnim, the 
German ambassador at Paris in the early seventies, seemed 
coquetting with the French royalists, Bismarck had him re- 
called and disgraced. 

III. To prevent any other power from giving comfort 
to France, the Iron Chancellor studiously avoided all inci- 
dents that might give them offense. England was treated 
with marked consideration by him. "Cousin Land-rat and 
Cousin Water-rat," as Bismarck said, ought to be the best 
of friends. Italy was praised and cajoled. As for Russia 
and Austria the great minister soon went much further. 

England, Italy and France had each, after their manner, 
liberal constitutions. In Germany, Austria and Russia, al- 
though the first two empires had the forms of constitutions, 
the personal influence of the monarchs was still — to state it 
mildly — tremendous. These three empires were therefore the 
bulwarks of militarism, autocracy, and anti-liberalism against 
all the rest of the civilized world. Their rulers had very 
many interests in common, and every season to work to- 
gether. Austria had been beaten roundly by Prussia in 
1866, but she was already getting over the effects of a defeat 
which Bismarck had taken pains should not be humiliating. 
The relations of William I and Czar Alexander II were ex- 
cellent. 

The chancellor was speedily to turn this community of in- 
terest into something tangible. In Austria in 1871 the old, 
violently anti-German foreign minister Beust had been re- 
placed by the Hungarian Andrassy, who was on far better 
personal terms with Bismarck. The results of this change 
manifested themselves in the early days of September, 1872, 
when Franz Josef the Hapsburg, Alexander II the Romanoff 
and their gold-braided suites simultaneously visited Berlin 
to be received by their Hohenzollern friend and rival, and to 
congratulate him in turn upon his new imperial honors. 
Of course behind the elaborate state-banquets, reviews, fetes 
and spectacular ceremonies the ministers of the three great- 
est conservative monarchies in the world were mapping out 
a programme. Naturally the Austrian representatives were 



310 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

somewhat reserved, in view of the happenings of 1866, but 
they were practical men who did not cry too much over the 
spilled milk of the past. As a consequence, the "League of 
the Three Emperors" was admitted before Europe. It was 
not a formal alliance. The three monarchs simply agreed not 
to attack one another, and to work for the common peace 
with good comradeship and harmony. It was, as English- 
men or Americans would say, merely "a gentleman's agree- 
ment." But Bismarck desired nothing more. He knew that 
France would hardly attack Germany single-handed, and as 
for England or Italy turning upon the expanded Hohenzol- 
lern empire, the thing was almost out of the reckoning. 

In 1873 Bismarck accompanied William I and Von Moltke 
to St. Petersburg. The chancellor was lionized in the most 
distinguished Russian society. No one could compliment 
him enough; and in return he made profuse acknowledgment 
of the great debt Germany owed to Russia by her attitude 
in 1870. "If I should admit merely the thought/' said Bis- 
marck, "of ever being hostile to the czar and to Russia, I 
should consider myself as a traitor!" All through 1874 this 
spirit of happy unity among the three empires seemed to 
continue. Then in 1875 came the first rift. 

France had recovered from her humiliation with a most 
disconcerting ease. The skill of her financiers and the pa- 
triotism of her people in subscribing for a vast issue of gov- 
ernment bonds, had enabled her to discharge the war in- 
demnity which German experts had expected would prove 
crushing. She was setting up an orderly system of govern- 
ment, and was reorganizing her army on a strictly scientific 
basis. There were plenty of angry spirits in the officers' 
messes at Berlin to rail at the chancellor for not having 
exacted a more pitiless ransom, and for not driving home 
the original blow so as to prevent forever a war for "re- 
venge." There was also a feeling akin to alarm and anger 
in influential German circles at the rapid rehabilitation of 
their old enemy. It was freely alleged that the new French 
army was not, as announced in Paris, "purely defensive," 
but had a deliberately aggressive intention. 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 311 

Then followed a serious "war scare." The exact details 
are still vague. "The whole incident remains mysterious," 
says a very competent American writer. 1 But a "scare" cer- 
tainly there was. On April 8th, the influential "Post" of 
Berlin published an ominous article headed "War in Sight!" 
Three days later the "North German Gazette" (practically a 
semi-official organ) republished the article without comments. 
The French government, made anxious already by several 
happenings, now began to feel real alarm. Its ambassador 
sent word to Paris that at a banquet Von Radowitz, one of 
Bismarck's prime lieutenants, had talked ominously of "pre- 
ventive wars" and of how Germany would be justified "on 
the grounds of humanity" in attacking France, instead of 
waiting for the latter to recover further from the effects of 
1870. There were stories too of threats in military circles 
from Moltke and others; and on May 5th, the German am- 
bassador at Paris told the French ministry formally that 
' ' his government was not entirely convinced of the inoffensive 
character of the French armaments"; and that "the German 
general staff considers war against Germany as the ultimate 
object of those armaments, and so looks forward to their con- 
sequences. ' ' 

France, however, had no intention of being dragged into 
a hopeless quarrel without serious reasons. Her envoys at 
London and St. Petersburg sought and obtained sympathetic 
hearings. Blowitz, 2 the famous continental correspondent of 
the London "Times," published a sensation article. Lord 
Derby, the British foreign minister, sent very direct remon- 
strances to Berlin. Queen Victoria, whose personal influence 
with all monarchs was incalculable, wrote direct to William I 
in the interest of peace. Most serious of all (from Bismarck's 
point of view), Alexander II bestirred himself. No longer 

i Coolidge, "Origins of the Triple Alliance," p. 60. 

2 Blowitz was the very prince of newspaper correspondents. He en- 
joyed the secrets of great statesmen. At Berlin Congress (1878) he 
kept making such revelations that at the beginning of a certain session 
Bismarck was seen solemnly looking under the table. Some one asked 
if His Excellency could explain his actions. "I am looking for Blo- 
witz," gravely retorted the chancellor. 



312 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

passive as in 1870, he made it clear that he would not wait 
to see France ruined a second time. On May 10th the czar 
and his great minister Gortschakov arrived on a friendly visit 
in Berlin. Instantly William I, a genuine lover of modera- 
tion, assured them he had no desire for war. Gortschakov 
thereupon grandiloquently issued a public statement, "peace is 
now assured/' Bismarck did not enjoy being thus openly 
lectured by Gortschakov, nor did he like having all the nations 
know that France had somehow turned a trick on Germany. 
Henceforth he and the Russian minister became personal 
enemies, and could no longer co-operate for the weal of 
Europe. 

What exactly had happened behind the scenes is as yet a 
decided puzzle. Bismarck declared that Radowitz had taken 
too much wine at the banquet, and had chattered nonsense. 
All the rest, he said, was newspaper irresponsibility. But 
it was not simply that. The military clique around Moltke 
had been assuredly ready for a blow, and Bismarck had not 
seemed very ready to prevent them. There is no reasonable 
doubt that a deadly stroke had been almost directed at 
France. The afterclap of course was to demonstrate that 
England and Russia (and presumably other powers also) 
were not willing to have France eliminated for all time from 
the list of great nations, and to have Germany shatter to 
bits the much cherished "balance of power in Europe'." 
Henceforth Germany must talk at least courteously, and not 
brandish the sword merely because France claimed the right 
to self-respecting existence. 

This was the first and the immediate result of the famous 
"war scare" of 1875. The next was to teach Bismarck 
that he could not reckon on the steadfast support of Russia. 
In 1878 he was to revenge himself by helping to smash up 
the Treaty of San Stefano (pp. 92-3) for the benefit indeed of 
England, but still more for that of Austria on whom he had 
decided to lean in preference to the czar. 

By 1878 it was therefore pretty clear: (a) that France 
had pulled herself together and was again a real power in 
the world; and (b) that since both Austria and Russia were 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 813 

importunate seekers for the same Balkan booty from the 
Turks, the Germans could not have the hearty alliance of 
both. Yet Bismarck needed at least one sure ally; otherwise 
he might have to face a hostile coalition created by France. 
He could still have had Russia by giving the czar hearty 
support in his Balkan adventure. The chancellor, however, 
preferred Austria. It is doubtful whether he had already 
caught the Pan-Germanists ' vision of an Austrian empire 
rendered economically and politically obedient to the superior 
genius of Prussia, and with the Hapsburg emperor only the 
highest satrap of the kaiser at Berlin. But even barring 
that, he knew that Austria needed a reliable protector against 
Russia and would consequently repay faithfulness with faith- 
fulness; and also that the czar was so masterful a sovereign, 
with such a mighty realm, that it would be useless to ex- 
pect of him any prompt obedience to the suggestions of his 
ally. In other words, if Germany made league with Russia, 
she made alliance with a proud equal; if with Austria with 
a useful subordinate. Bismarck's choice was thus marked out 
for him. 

At the Berlin Congress, it is reasonably clear that Bis- 
marck tried to keep on fairly friendly terms with Russia, while 
at the same time playing the game of Austria; but even his 
adroitness failed when it came thus to carrying water on 
both shoulders. The Russian newspapers in the winter of 
1878-79 were full of violent anti-German articles, and even 
spoke favorably of an alliance with France ; and Russian news- 
papers (in that land of the censor) were not permitted to say 
things unwelcome to the government. The Iron Chancellor 
was the more ready therefore to go over to Austria. Still, 
he had a hard fight with his own sovereign, William I, who 
was very intimate personally with his nephew Alexander II, 
and the czar was using his influence to warn the Kaiser not 
to let a mere quarrel between Bismarck and Gortschakov 
(for so he saw the issue) be the means of embroiling two 
mighty empires Nevertheless, Bismarck as usual beat down 
the objections of his rather simple-minded lord and master. 
On September 21, 1879, the chancellor went to Vienna and 



314 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

conferred with the astute Austrian prime-minister Andrassy. 
The Austrian statesman indeed refused to make the pact as 
elaborate as the German desired ; particularly he declined to 
make a general treaty of alliance, saying Austria had no 
quarrel with France; but that did not trouble Bismarck, for 
he knew that France without an ally was helpless against 
Germany. By September 24, the treaty had been drafted, and 
Bismarck undertook to induce Kaiser Wilhelm to give it his 
signature. 

The German emperor, however, hesitated long. He con- 
sidered himself personally beholden to Alexander. To silence 
his objections Bismarck induced the king of Bavaria, Moltke, 
the whole military staff, and other high officials to join in 
urging William to ratify. Reluctantly he did so; and on 
October 7, 1879, the final treaty was perfected. 

This treaty seemed of a wholly defensive character. It 
was aimed clearly enough at Russia, the one power that then 
seemed strong enough to menace the safety of either Austria 
or Germany. In brief, it was provided that if either the 
Vienna or Berlin kaiser got into war with any government 
save the czar's, "the high ally" of the party engaged should 
preserve a "benevolent neutrality 7 '; but if the czar took up 
arms, either alone, or as the confederate of some other power, 
then both Austria and Germany were to unite against him. 
When the pact became known in England, Lord Beaconsfield's 
foreign minister. Lord Salisbmy, hailed the issue as "good 
tiding of great joy." In France there was much apprehen- 
sion ; but Bismarck assured his old enemy there was no danger 
of a new attack. The Russians, realizing the treaty was aimed 
directly at them, were resentful, indeed, but bided their time. 
William I wrote to Alexander II, trying to explain that the 
treaty implied nothing unfriendly. The czar wrote back 
ironically: "I like to see in it the return to that perfect 
understanding between the three emperors which you [praise 
so highly]." 

Very soon after this Alexander II was murdered by nihilists 
(1881). In his stead ruled Alexander III, an arbitrary, nar- 
row-minded despot, who was however a real lover of peace, 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 315 

and who was so busy crushing down revolutions at home that 
he had no time for foreign adventures. Russia, in fact, for 
a while, relaxed part of her interests in the Balkan lands 
towards which Austria was extending eager hands; she even 
allowed Austria to make the profligate Milan of Serbia so 
completely her pensioner that while he reigned Serbia was 
only in name an independent kingdom. But although the new 
alliance of Germany and Austria had seemed thus to have a 
most quieting effect on Europe, Bismarck intended to make 
it still stronger. The Dual Alliance reached out its hand 
to Italy. 

Italy had no special love for the Hohenzollerns, and no 
love at all for Austria. The desires for Italia irredenta, for 
the lands about Trieste and Trent, were still ardent; but 
there seemed no prospects of recovering them speedily. On 
the other hand the relations between France and Italy were 
cold. French troops had been of great service in 1859 in 
partially clearing Italy of the Austrians, but Napoleon III 
had won the poor esteem of the Italians by failing to dis- 
charge his complete promise to Cavour to deliver Venetia 
although exacting Nice and Savoy, the lands promised France 
in return for her complete aid, and finally by sustaining the 
temporal power of the papacy. On the other hand, for a long 
time after 1870, it seemed possible that France would fall 
under a party very friendly to the Church and that at any 
moment a French army might be marching on Rome to restore 
the temporal power of the pope. There was, besides, some 
little commercial and industrial rivalry and friction between 
Italy and her Gallic neighbor. Italy wished to be treated 
as a great power and to have her interests consulted on mosl 
world-questions; she was extremely sensitive to slights, anc 1 
extremely angry when she was not taken quite seriously 
At the Congress of Berlin Italy was invited to send a delegate 
to occupy a chair at the conference table and to look impor 
tant when Beaconsfield was speaking, but he brought bacl 
nothing except, as he boasted, "clean hands. " His Frencl 
colleague had been rather more lucky. 

In the southern Mediterranean only one hundred miles oi 



316 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

dancing blue water sundered Italian Sicily from Moorish 
Tunis. Here, in the country of the ancient and mighty 
Carthage, stagnated a wretched little Moslem principality 
which had declined steadily since its one industry of piracy 
had been frowned upon. This principality Italy was now 
marking for her own. In 1871, the great patriot Mazzini had 
written, "Tunis, the key to the central Mediterranean, . . . 
distant but twenty-five leagues from Sicily, obviously turns 
toward Italy. . . . Today the French are making eyes at it, 
and will soon possess it, if we do not. ' ' 

Mazzini was entirely right in his surmise. The French 
had now a firm grip on Algeria, next to Tunis, and were not 
at all averse to considering taking over that country. Be- 
sides, two great powers were egging them on. Bismarck de- 
liberately gave the French to understand that he would not 
oppose their seeking a group of colonies. "Stop gazing al- 
ways at that gap in the Vosges," he once admonished the 
French ambassador, in that frank tone of the gruff uncle 
which he often liked to assume. He really believed, it seems, 
that the joys of a great colonial domain would make the 
French less pensive about Alsace-Lorraine, and that the petty 
wars and troubles of colonies would certainly head off schemes 
for "revenge." At the Berlin Congress he dropped very 
broad hints to AVaddington, the French envoy, that Germany 
would not oppose France if she went into Tunis. Wadding- 
ton received another authoritative hint : — this time from Lord 
Salisbury, to the effect that England recognized the position 
of France in Algeria and would be glad to see her in Tunis 
also. Such intimations were not lost upon the Paris colonial 
office, and it shaped its policy accordingly. 1 

i Bismarck was later blamed severely by the Pan-Germans for thus 
letting France build up a colonial empire, — the very thing Germany 
needed. Representative Germans have told me that it was a misfortune 
that in 1870 the victors had not demanded the French colonies, espe- 
cially Algeria (the loss of which then would have cost France few 
pangs) instead of Alsace-Lorraine and its heritage of hatred. 

Knsland probably did not want to see Italy control simultaneously 
Sicily and Tunis, and thus dominate both sides of the Mediterranean 
at one of its narrowest points. 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 317 

The Italians had an inkling of French intentions and 
their consul at Tunis, Signore Maccio, at once commenced 
a vigorous course of intrigue to get the main influence over 
the native bey, and to wean him away from French predilec- 
tions. But after some hesitation the French resolved to 
strike. In 1881, 30,000 reliable troops, avowedly in pursuit 
of an unruly Moorish tribe, crossed the frontiers from Algeria 
and marched straight on Tunis. Italy stood helpless. She 
could not resist France unaided, and no other power arose 
to champion her. The French general calmly entered Tunis 
and dictated in the palace a treaty to the distracted bey, 
which in name indeed left to His Highness his throne, but 
which consigned to his French "adviser" practically all the 
final authority. Italy had lost Tunis entirely. It had be- 
come a Paris protectorate. 

There was wrath in Rome and vain mutterings, but in Ber- 
lin a sage old statesman was smiling and taking comfort. It 
would take twenty years at least for Italy and France really 
to become friends again. The great foe of Germany was more 
isolated among the powers of Europe than ever. 

King Humbert of Italy and his ministers had only one 
effective way in which to show their ill-will to France. They 
would make friends with Germany and Austria. In October, 
1881, King Humbert deliberately went on a visit to Vienna 
to the old oppressor of the House of Savoy, Franz Josef. 
This trip of ceremony was followed by the real business among 
the diplomats. Italy was only too ready for an alliance pro- 
vided she could henceforth feel secure against the insults of 
France. She was so eager for the pact that she waived all 
question of Italia irredenta and even of the support of her 
ambitions in the Mediterranean. The most that she really 
obtained was a pledge for the defense of her territories 
against invasion. The actual terms of this treaty of the 
"Triple Alliance" were secret. They have never been pub- 
lished in full, but the general impression is that Italy was 
promised very little except the integrity of her own home- 
land and in return had to pledge herself to maintain a huge 
army, far beyond her wealth, and to come to the rescue of 



318 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Germany and Austria if they should be attacked 1 by "two 
foreign powers" (i.e., Russia and France) even if the quarrel 
was one that concerned Italy not the slightest. 

On May 22, 1882, the pact was signed at Vienna, although 
it was some months before the existence of the great alliance 
was admitted to the world. 

"The formation of the Triple Alliance was another triumph 
for Bismarck. He paid almost nothing for it" in what he 
gave Italy, and he obtained "an important addition to the 
forces of the Austro-German alliance in case of a conflict with 
France and Russia." France was of course more isolated, 
helpless, and angry at the European situation than ever. 
Russia likewise disliked the whole case. But for the hour 
Bismarck seemed to have achieved another master-stroke in 
diplomacy. So long as England remained neutral he had 
created one of the most powerful international combinations 
conceivable, and "for better or for worse the Triple Alliance 
was destined to last for a whole generation, during which 
it was to be one of the dominant forces in the European 
world." 2 

The Triple Alliance seemed to stand without a rival for 
several years France was too perplexed with her own sore 
problems and her government seemed too unstable to make 
her a useful ally for Russia, even if the alliance of a liberal 
republic and a despotic empire did not seem almost an ab- 
surdity. As long as Russia and France stood apart Germany 
was not in the slightest real danger, and that was the guar- 

1 It should be observed that Italy was only bound to aid in a defen- 
sive war: not in an offensive war, as she considered the one begun by 
her nominal allies in 1914. 

2 Coolidge, "Origins of the Triple Alliance," pp. 213-218. Bismarck 
had only a slight esteem for the Italian army, although he considered 
King Humbert's fleet as a power in the Mediterranean. What he did 
wish to be sure about was that the French should have to divert troops 
to guard their south-eastern frontier. A threat there would produce 
great weakening elsewhere. "It was enough," he said, "that an Italian 
corporal with an Italian flag and a drummer beside him should array 
himself against the West (France) and not against the East (Aus- 
tria)." 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 31! 

antee which Bismarck wanted. But after the fall of Bon 
langer in 1889, it was reasonably evident that the Third Re 
public would enjoy a long lease of life, and circumstance 
were making Russia more and more in need of a powerfu 
ally. France was recovering the respect of the world. Sh 
no longer appeared to be inhabited by "a gay people, fon< 
of dancing/ ' * nor by a set of hopeless "red revolutionaries.' 
French thrift had accumulated a great deal of loanable capi 
tal, and Russia needed the same for factories, railroads, ne^ 
artillery and what-not else. 

As a result the two powers drew together. It was clear! 
a "marriage of interest/ ' not of affection. There was littl 
inherently in common between the land of Latin republican 
and the then land of the czar, the Cossacks, the knout and th 
road to Siberia. But both nations feared and distrusts 
Germany, and both nations, at this time, were on no gooi 
terms with England. France was grieved at the way she ha< 
been elbowed out of Egypt (see Chapter VI), even if he 
troubles there had been partly of her own making. Russi 
remembered the voided pact of San Stefano and the way i: 
which England had halted her advance to India via Afghanis 
tan. In fact, as things seemed then, it was physically possibl 
that England should make an alliance with Germany, Britai: 
to rule the seas and Prussia to dominate the continent, am 
thus leave both the Third Republic and the czar in peril o 
their independence. 

In 1887, at a time when Bismarck was blustering agains 
France, in order to get the Reichstag to vote more money fo 
the army, Czar Alexander II wrote on the margin of a con 
fidential report from his foreign minister, "We must no 
let France be diminished." Speedily afterwards there cam 
on the scene a M. Hoskier, a banker of Danish birth bu 
French connection, who undertook to float a large Russia: 
loan in the Paris money markets. In December, 1888, 
great loan, subscribed to by over 100,000 persons and fo 

i This characterization of the French appeared in a geography ver 
familiar in American schools a generation ago. Such damnations of 
great nation by a phrase have done the French infinite harm. 



320 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

500,000,000 francs ($100,000,000) was thus placed in France 
for the benefit of the czar. This was only the beginning. 
There were more loans, and still greater ones, in 1889, 1890, 
1891, 1894, 1896, 1901, 190-4 and 1906. By that time France 
had loaned Russia for one purpose or another (governmental, 
municipal and industrial) at least 12,000,000,000 francs 
($2,400,000,000) ; and too late the Berlin bankers were lament- 
ing the blindness of their diplomats in angering the czar to 
the extent that had opened this vast field of exploitation to 
their rivals. 

Enormous loans like this, however, were not to be had in 
Paris for nothing but the bond certificates and the interest. 
French diplomats knew how to insinuate this point delicately 
but clearly at St. Petersburg. Besides, in 1890, M. Con- 
stans, the French minister of the interior, rendered Alex- 
ander III an invaluable personal service by clapping in jail 
a band of nihilist exiles in Paris who were in the act of manu- 
facturing a w r hole arsenal of bombs intended for the Russian 
imperial family. Russians found the great French munition 
plants always at their disposal, and speedily the results of all 
this by-play were evident. In 1891 Admiral Cervais led a 
French fleet proudly under the guns of the mighty fortress of 
Kronstadt. There was elaborate "fraternization" by the 
sailors of the two navies. The czar visited the French flag- 
ship and stood with uncovered head under the shadow of the 
tri-color flag of the great Revolution, while the naval band 
played the "Marseillaise," the fighting hymn of democracy. 
It was not until 1896 that there was official announcement 
of the treaty of alliance, but everybody knew that it ex- 
isted. The Triple Alliance was opposed now by the Dual 
Alliance. 

The exact terms of the new pact were not published, any 
more than were those of its older rival. It was soon under- 
stood, however, that it did not contemplate any war of aggres- 
sion or any scheme to tear up the Treaty of Frankfort and win 
back Alsace-Lorraine. On the other hand, it did undoubtedly 
guarantee France against a new attack from Germany unless 
provoked by France herself. 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 321 

The world did not fail to notice that the Dual Alliance 
had come into being just about a year after William II had 
"dropped the pilot," Bismarck, and begun to steer the Ger- 
man ship of state himself. From his retreat the ex-chancellor 
covered with bitter ridicule the new rulers who had failed 
to stave off this dreaded combination. It may be a fair 
question, however, whether Bismarck with all his genius could 
have kept Russia and France asunder much longer, unless he 
had been willing to give the czar a free hand in the Balkans 
at the expense of Austria, or to cede back Alsace-Lorraine. 
The new combination, furthermore, seemed at first more anti- 
British than anti-German. Britain was still shivering at 
the idea of seeing French regiments ferrying across the Chan- 
nel to Dover and of seeing Cossacks riding simultaneously into 
Egypt and India. The combined navies of France and Rus- 
sia figured up, on paper, dangerously close to the navy of 
Britain. In short, at the new alliance Berlin was piqued 
but in no wise alarmed. Although the great population of 
Russia made the number of bayonets in the new "Dual 
Alliance ' ' seem about as many as those in the Triple Alliance, 
military students knew that the two leagues were hardly 
equal in land-strength. The czar's legions lacked suitable 
railroads for complete mobilization, their officers were of less 
technical ability than their possible opponents, and the Mus- 
covite infantryman, brave though he might be, lacked the 
education and probable intelligence to make him match man 
for man his Western rivals. In addition to all else the Triple 
Alliance had the great advantage of continuous boundaries 
and inner military lines. In short, the Dual Alliance hardly 
equalled the Triple Alliance as a military combination. 1 

Nevertheless, France plus Russia constituted a mighty 
power, the destruction whereof would test all the strength of 
Moltke's war-machine and its allies. There was nothing for 
Berlin to do but to make the best of the facts : — to treat France 
with greater consideration than formerly, and to be exceed- 

1 This was of course amply demonstrated in 1914 when the Teutonic 
powers, even without Italy, very possihly would have won a pretty 
speedy victory had England stayed neutral. 



322 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ingly gracious to Russia. This latter policy was made easy by 
the death of Alexauder III iu 1894 and the accession of Nich- 
olas II. The character of this unfortunate prince is discussed 
elsewhere (see page 506) ; it is enough to say that he was sub- 
ject to the personal hypnotism which William II was able to 
throw over very many men whom he desired to win: the 
Kaiser easily played on his imperial "brother" and kins- 
man's personal weaknesses. The extremely practical con- 
siderations which had impelled both Russia and France to 
enter the Dual Alliance prevented either side from being at 
all anxious to draw the sword in behalf of its ally save in a 
clear-cut case of wanton aggression. In 1898, France had 
a grievous collision with England over the Fashoda affair 
in Africa (see page 112). Russian statesmen merely shrugged 
their shoulders, however, when it was suggested that they 
should go to war over the right of France to plant her flag 
upon the Upper Nile. In 1904-05, Russia in her turn fell 
into war with Japan. France showed herself a very friendly 
neutral towards Russia, but was not required to fight in a 
purely Asiatic quarrel. In 1904 also came the famous Dog- 
gerbank incident that almost embroiled England with Rus- 
sia. 1 France did her best to get the quarrel composed by 
arbitration. Whether she would have gone to war then if 
England had come to blows with Russia is an open question. 
The Dual Alliance, therefore, like the Triple Alliance, was 
only a defensive pact, and not a serious menace to the world's 
peace. However, that fact for a long time made it all the 
more valuable. Both alliances promised little help to their 
members if individual powers went off on schemes for bloody 
exploitation; but both alliances promised honest defense in 
case any member was attacked in its home territories and real 
integrity. So long as there was no single nation in Europe 
that felt so confident of its own might that it could safely dis- 
regard the wishes of its nominal allies, the two alliances pro- 

i When a Russian fleet en route through the North Sea for the Pacific 
fired upon a number of English fishing craft, imagining them to be Jap- 
anese torpedo boats. 



THE BUILDING OF THE ALLIANCES 323 

vided excellent safety-valves for the occasional blasts of war- 
steam. This state of equilibrium, unstable indeed but fairly 
secure, lasted from 1891 to 1905. During that time there 
were, on the whole, fewer "war-scares" and capital problems 
for the diplomats than in any like period earlier or later. 
German statesmen were still believed when they talked 
"peace"; the Balkans and Turkey were not more than ordi- 
narily vexed, despite the Armenian and Cretan issues; Eng- 
land was still content with her "splendid isolation." Con- 
fident in her fleet, engrossed in her home and colonial prob- 
lems, she still jauntily despised the jealousy of France, faced 
down the aggressions of Russia in the East and reared up 
Japan as a counterpoise to the Muscovite, while treating Ger- 
many as at the worst a land of learned professors with 
execrable table manners. Thus Albion went on her way — 
little disturbed for long when warning voices told her that 
many nations hated her and that, especially in Berlin, states- 
men with shoulder-straps were preparing trouble for her. 

The one great gainer by the balance of alliances was France. 
"By means of the Russian alliance, she had broken the circle 
of sqlitude in which Bismarck had confined her" (Tardieu). 
Certain now that the czar would shield her from her worst 
nightmare, an unprovoked attack by the whole power of 
Germany, her statesmen recovered their poise and their self- 
confidence. In 1898, she had obtained a remarkable foreign 
minister, Theophile Delcasse, who, before 1904, had with great 
success cleared up old outstanding diplomatic problems with 
Italy, with Spain, and, more important still, with England. 
France, by the test of years of firm government and by pa- 
tient economic expansion, had won back her place in the 
world. The nations respected her; her influence was in- 
creasing; and yet all Europe seemed at peace. Then in 
1904 upon her Russian ally came the Japanese war. The 
czar was obviously involved on a disastrous foreign venture. 
He could give no real aid to his confederate in Europe. 
Hardly, in 1905, had the news spread of the serious defeat of 
the Russians at Mukden, when the Berlin foreign office mani- 



324 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

f ested a sudden and amazing interest in the relation of France 
to Morocco, a question whereof earlier the Kaiser's minister 
had hardly breathed a word. 

The year 1905 marked the opening of nine years of in- 
trigue, threats, "war scares," tension and growing national 
hatred leading steadily towards Armageddon. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PROMISE AND FAILURE OP THE HAGUE 
PEACE CONFERENCES 

INTERNATIONAL law is that branch of law which has 
to do with the relations of states to each other. Because 
it has not been made by a supreme law-giver, and because no 
impartial authority has been set up definitely to enforce it, 
some men insist that it is not law at all. This may be the 
case, but at least all must admit that there is a branch of 
human relations which is covered by a code of what we call 
' ' international law. ' ' 

The two great problems of international relations are war 
and peace. The two conditions are opposed to each other. 
Peace is that state of affairs between nations in which the gov- 
ernments conduct all common business without resort to force, 
by what we call peaceful negotiations. War is the reverse 
of this: it is the prosecution of claims by one state against 
another by force. Instead of persuading the spirit and con- 
vincing the mind of its neighbor, the state in war uses ma- 
terial forces, men and munitions, to destroy and weaken its 
opponent until the latter sees that it is useless to resist. De- 
struction is not au end in itself. "War has absolutely no other 
object except to convince a state that, whatever may be its 
ideas as to the right or wrong or the fundamental justice, 
of the demands put upon it, it is not possible to resist them. 
Then it sues for peace; the victorious state takes what it 
wants ; and the condition of peace is supposed to prevail again 
between them. 

Since international law has to do with the relations of states 
to each other, it falls naturally under two heads : the law of 
peace, and the law of war. All international law can be 
put under the one or the other caption. 

325 



326 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The ancient Greeks, perhaps even the Babylonians and the 
Persians, had customs regulating the relations between groups 
of people, — villages, tribes, and city-states, — which may be 
considered as having constituted the international law of their 
day. Rome, too, at first acknowledged such customs, but as 
she towered upward to world empire, she recognized outside 
tribes and nations only as inferiors and enemies, to whom she 
owed nothing but contemptuous tolerance or hard blows. It 
was not, indeed, until after the rise of the modern state sys- 
tem out of a decadent feudalism that international law came 
into its own. The Thirty Years' War, which raged on the 
continent of Europe during the first half of the seventeenth 
century, and the treaties of Westphalia which concluded it in 
1648, first brought into clear light the existence in Europe 
of many national states. It was Hugo Grotius's masterpiece, 
"The Law of War and of Peace," written while this savage 
war was being waged, which laid the foundations of the mod- 
ern study of international law (1625). 

Since the days of Grotius two important things have hap- 
pened to international law. In the first place, it has come 
to be recognized by states as more or less binding upon them. 
Developing at first all unconsciously, it had grown until it 
became noticeable to scholars, above all to Grotius. They 
took the facts as they found them, spun their theories, and 
presented the results to the world in treatises. Scoffed at a 
little at first, the new learning summoned up also its sup- 
porters, and soon found itself woven into the very life of 
the nations as their law. Young men aspiring to places in 
the departments of foreign affairs either at home or abroad 
are now required to have a knowledge of international law. 
The mere fact that this requirement is made shows that all 
states intend to recognize this law, though some may study 
it as lawyers often study ordinary law, in order to discover 
its loop-holes. There is probabty not a state on the planet 
which would not confess that international law is more or less 
binding upon it, even to-day in the crisis of the world. 

The second important thing that has happened to interna- 
tional law since Grotius's times is that it has developed and 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 327 

expanded tremendously, and that methods have been de- 
vised of developing it consciously. International law develops 
from two independent but complementary sources, — custom 
and convention. A word ought to be said as to each. Cus- 
tom is a source of both municipal and international law. 
When there is no written law as to the rights of the parties 
under certain conditions, or as to the method of procedure, 
given a set of facts calling for action, the judge or the par- 
ties find a convenient and just way around the difficulty. If 
a second case of the same type arises soon, it is likely to be 
settled according to the precedent in the first, or if that worked 
out badly, then a different decision is reached. In time an 
habitual method of settlement is reached, and when a thing 
has become customary it is very nearly law. 

Thus it is in international law, as a single case will show. 
In the eighteenth century and earlier, it was the custom for 
all states to take part, more ©r less directly, in a war be- 
tween any two. The conception that a state could be neutral, 
though existent, was vague. In 1793, when France and Great 
Britain were at war, France desired us to enter the war on 
her side. Washington, confronting this grave problem for 
the first time, called together his cabinet, and together they 
decided to issue a proclamation of neutrality. The step was 
a novel one, but its results were extremely important in the 
history of international law. Neutrality became a definite 
status, and the issue of neutrality proclamations at the com- 
mencement of wars between other states, became a regular 
and soon an expected practice. It seems impossible to talk of 
"starting a custom, " but that is just what Washington's ad- 
ministration did in issuing the neutrality proclamation of 
1793. The importance of this custom in the limitation of 
wars to the few actual participants cannot be overestimated. 
Wars thereafter were limited definitely to a few parties, and, 
to speak in metaphor, there ceased to be any reason why 
every local fire should become a conflagration. 

The other source of international law is convention or 
agreement. International agreements are of many kinds, but 
two can be easily distinguished. Treaties, in the ordinary 



328 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

sense, are generally limited to two parties. Moreover, the 
contents of simple treaties are usually not declarative of in- 
ternational law. On the other hand, there are conventions, 
drawn up and adopted by two or more, usually more, states, 
and very often declarative of some new principle of action 
to be binding among them in the future. Such conventions 
are especially important sources of international law. Many 
such have been drawn up in the course of the nineteenth and 
early twentieth centuries, for the purpose of expanding or 
developing international law. Up to 1914, statesmen were 
relying more and more upon this method of improving the 
relations existing between states, especially in the direction 
of limiting war and its awful consequences. This action was 
conscious and statesmanlike. It built upon the prevalent 
state system and the existing principles of international law. 
It was evolutionary, and therefore it accorded well with the 
natural human material of which states are, after all, com- 
posed. 

It is in pursuance of this method of developing interna- 
tional law that there have been held in Europe from time to 
time conferences of the official representatives of leading 
states. Thus, at the close of the Crimean War there was 
held at Paris (1856) the Congress of Paris, in which England, 
France, Sardinia, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were repre- 
sented, as well as Turkey, which was then admitted to the 
circle of nations. This conference issued the Declaration 
of Paris, abolishing privateering forever, and laying down 
the fundamental rules concerning the capture of goods and 
ships at sea, including therein a clear definition of lawful 
blockade. In 1864 the representatives of the chief powers 
on the continent of Europe met at Geneva and adopted a con- 
vention for the amelioration of the condition of wounded 
soldiers, the convention which gave to the Red Cross an in- 
ternational status. In 1868 the delegates of practically the 
same powers drew up the Declaration of St. Petersburg, 
which laid down "that the only legitimate object which states 
should endeavor to accomplish during war is to weaken the 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 329 

military forces of the enemy/' 1 and that any weapon or 
missile which not only put the wounded man hors de combat 
but uselessly aggravated his sufferings or made his death 
inevitable would "be contrary to the laws of humanity." 
In 1874 the powers again met in conference, this time at 
Brussels, and drew up the draft of a declaration concern- 
ing the laws and customs of land warfare. This declara- 
tion was never ratified. 

The beginnings here enumerated were pregnant with the 
possibility of good results. It is notable that in all these 
great conferences of the nations, steps were taken to make 
war less brutal, and to protect the neutral as far as possible 
from suffering. It is also to be remarked that the method 
followed was the same in all : a conscious international agree- 
ment to fix and to improve the principles of international 
law. The conferences were practically limited to European 
powers, Japan, the United States, and other distant nations 
not being represented, though they later accepted the re- 
sults in one way or another. 

While these great steps were being taken by statesmen in 
the direction of making war less brutal, there was parallel 
progress in the way of substituting peaceful for warlike 
means of settling international disputes. In the so-called 
Jay Treaty, drawn up in 1794 between England and the 
United States to settle some outstanding differences as to 
boundaries and debts, provision was made for the creation of 
several boards of arbitrators, one to ascertain the northeastern 
boundary of the United States, another to adjudicate upon 
debts owed by Americans to British merchants, and a third 
to pass upon the amount of damages inflicted upon peaceful 
American commerce by British ships in the war then raging 
between France and England. This plan of submitting dis- 
putes to arbitrators was a revival of a very ancient principle 
in international law well known to the Greeks and the 
Romans, and its results were extremely beneficent. The 
practice thus begun in 1794 grew steadily, almost rapidly, 

i See end of chapter, note on "German War Practices." 



330 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

From 1794 to 1872 history records the peaceful settlement of 
over ninety international disputes by the arbitration method. 
The last, and most important up to that time, the settlement 
of the Alabama Claims at Geneva in 1872, though it angered 
the British because they had to pay what they considered 
excessive damages, proved that this method could be success- 
fully used in cases of first-rate importance. Naturally, people 
of pacific leanings looked with ever more favor on arbitration 
as a possible means of averting war entirely. 

The two lines of development which have here been in- 
dicated came at about the same time. One aimed to de- 
brutalize war; the other had the effect of making wars less 
frequent. Naturally enough, the progress toward peace and 
humanity roused in some breasts hopes of a coming millen- 
nium. The impression it made upon others was quite the 
reverse. 

Three entirely different classes of thinkers should here be 
distinguished. In the first place there are those who de- 
plore war, and emphasize the importance of trying to settle 
all things peacefully, but who believe, nevertheless, that 
war is in some cases inevitable. They argue that war is in 
itself always wasteful, and because of the antagonisms it 
arouses it is never so successful as a peaceful solution of a 
problem. Most of the statesmen of the past century, respon- 
sible for the lives of millions of people, have taken this con- 
servative attitude. They have not, in most cases, risked 
lightly the lives of thousands of their fellow-citizens, but 
have recoiled from war until it appeared to be absolutely 
impossible to avoid it. Of this class we may mention a 
few American statesmen: Washington, who, though seri- 
ously provoked to war both by England and by France, re- 
frained; Madison, who felt himself finally compelled to ad- 
vocate a war against Great Britain; and Wilson, who was 
at last forced by an unusually arrogant violation of the rights 
of humanity to call us to war upon Germany. 

In recent years there has developed a group of thinkers, 
not themselves statesmen, who so much farther than the 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 331 

class just mentioned. These men, who have styled them- 
selves pacifists, have argued that war is never justified and 
is to be avoided in all cases, without exception. Their argu- 
ments are various. They consider the life of a single soldier 
worth more than was ever gained by any war. Some say 
that war never pays; that states know that it does not pay; 
therefore, states will never go to war. The trumpet call to 
Armageddon in 1914 was a sad awakening for men of this 
persuasion. Many were convinced that they had been 
' ' thinking with their hearts ' ' instead of with their heads. 
A few have, unfortunately, remained absolutely unconvinced. 1 
On the extreme opposite wing of the great class first men- 
tioned are the militarists who glorify war as desirable. 
They fall into various groups. Some of them argue that 
the modern national state is the highest product of civiliza- 
tion, worthy beyond all things else to be preserved. War, 
they say further, is one of the functions of the state, the 
army an essential institution. Therefore, they idealize war 
as a splendid necessity. Others say that man deteriorates, 
loses his virility, becomes a lover of money and the weaken- 
ing pleasures of society, a distinctly lower type of man, un- 
less he has wars occasionally to rouse him, purify him, force 
him to make sacrifices, and thus raise his ideals. These classes 
constantly incite to war, preaching and glorifying it on all 
possible occasions. "When you mention the decrease of 
armaments, they say the military equipment should be in- 
creased rather than decreased. If you dwell upon the suf- 
fering of men and women in war, they retort that it is better 
that a man die for his country than that he die a haber- 
dasher, counting over his wares and telling his cash, — a de- 
graded money-grubber. Tell him that Christianity is a 
religion of peace and that the Nazarene was a man of peace, 
and he replies that the Master said that "He came to bring 
not peace, but the sword," and that He himself used force 
to drive the money-changers from the Temple. Force — 

1 See Chapter XXII for a discussion of the predictions and theorizings 
of pacifism. 



332 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

that is the thing to which the war-worshipper pins his faith. 
This man, put at the head of a state, makes war on the slight- 
est pretext, and sometimes without a pretext. After he has 
done the deed, he says, he will find preachers and college 
professors aplenty to justify all he has done and more. He 
considers that state weak and contemptible which, instead 
of making war at once, tries first to reason with another 
state and does not make war until it is compelled to. 

Of the preachers of the doctrines of pacifism, there are 
some in every country, and they are to be found in every 
class of society. The socialist parties in every country, the 
so-called International, are of this faith. To them the State 
itself is unjustified, and had better be abolished, together 
with all its paraphernalia of armies, patriotism, and all, in 
favor of international government. The world-wide struggle 
between working classes and capitalists is the only important 
contest they recognize. There are also, in every country, 
those who believe in the doctrine of force and militarism, but 
as the result of historical processes their number is extremely 
small, especially in the small nations, but also in England, 
France, Italy, the United States, and, strange to say, in Rus- 
sia. There has been a great concentration of believers in the 
theory of force in Germany. It is there especially that they 
have been developed in recent times, and there in recent years 
they have been able to get control of the government as no- 
where else in the world. These German thinkers, — rulers, 
bureaucrats, army officers, preachers, university professors, — 
have shown a great contempt for the developments of interna- 
tional law which tend to limit war, and not a little apprehen- 
sion that the heresy would spread among Germans too, mak- 
ing them less warlike, less amenable to military control. To 
them war is a " part of the divine order, " * ' the sole arbiter ' ' 
in the affairs of men. 1 We quote but a few passages from the 
excellent compilation here referred to, passages drawn from 
Nietzsche, Treitschke, famous professors, army men, and the 
emperor himself. War is "a biological necessity, ... an 

i See Notestein, Wallace and Stoll, Elmer E., "Conquest and Kultur," 
especially chapters 3-5. 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 333 

indispensable regulator, because without war there could be 
neither racial nor cultural progress. ' ' ' ' War is a holy thing, 
the holiest thing on earth." "Arbitration treaties must be 
peculiarly detrimental to an aspiring people which has not 
yet reached its political and national zenith and is bent 
on expanding in order to play its part honorably in the 
civilized world." "Between states regarded as intelligent 
beings disputes can be settled only by material force. " " War 
is the fundamental phenomenon in the life of a state, and 
preparation for it assumes a preponderant place in the na- 
tional life." "We must strenuously combat the peace propa- 
ganda. War must regain its moral justification and its polit- 
ical significance in the eyes of the public." "War is justified 
because the great national personalities can suffer no compel- 
ling force superior to themselves, and because history must 
always be in constant flux; war, therefore, must be taken as 
part of the divinely appointed order." 

Thinkers of this class, detesting the very thought of peace 
and revolting against anything which will limit the sovereign 
state, naturally looked upon the progressive development of 
international law in the direction of peace and humanity as 
particularly subversive. Instead of encouraging the growth 
of international law, they felt it their duty to stop it, to 
"combat the peace propaganda." 

The pacifists, at the other extreme, looked upon the progress 
of international law as entirely too slow. Pacifists in all ages 
have been Utopians, from Dante (1265-1321) who spun his 
fine theory of a federal world-state under a single monarch or 
president, down through Kant who, in 1795, philosophized 
about "perpetual peace," even to our own day, in which we 
are being deluged with talk about the "federation of the 
world. ' ' While the law was making slow and steady progress 
up to about 1875, in limiting the use of force, the international 
socialists and the peace societies and agitators clamored for 
the quick adoption of treaties to abolish all war. 

Meanwhile, the statesmen of the world, backed by the great 
middle class of thinkers, were making haste slowly, some hold- 
ing back and desiring even slower progress. With sure steps, 



334 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

however, they went forward, building nothing on the sands 
if possible, but founding every advance upon solid achieve- 
ments of the past. So they were progressing, when in 1874 
the movement received a serious check. 

The failure of the European powers to ratify the Brussels 
draft declaration concerning the laws of war on land was a 
hard blow to the international conference idea. Germany saw 
in this declaration various articles which retrospectively con- 
demned her methods in the recent Franco-Prussian War. 
Other powers did not like certain innovations introduced by 
the declaration. It went unratified, and there followed a 
period in the development of international law which is 
worthy of study because it represents the arrest of this devel- 
opment. In the twenty-five years between 1874 and 1899, the 
number of general international conferences to define the 
principles of law binding the nations was almost nil. There 
were minor special conferences galore for the protection of 
trade-marks, copyrights, and so on. In distant America there 
began the Pan-American Congresses, but Europe knew them 
not. 

The main reason, it appears, why no general conferences 
were held during this quarter-century was that a feeling of 
profound uneasiness and distrust had fallen upon Europe 
after the Franco-Prussian War. At one sharp blow, France 
had been deposed from her place as the first power on the 
Continent. A new state, Germany, had forcefully taken her 
place, a nation which came preaching and practicing the 
gospel of " blood and iron." Europe was to be ruled during 
the succeeding decades not by peaceful international agree- 
ments, but by fear. The alliances and the balance of power 
were in the making as long as Bismarck, the man of Blood 
and Iron, was dominant in Europe, — and his preeminence was 
admitted even after his fall from power. There was but one 
thing for Europe to do : prepare for war. In the face of the 
new situation to prate of peace was to be foolish. 

Then it was that the competition in armaments between the 
European nations began in earnest. What had gone before 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 335 

seemed child's play by comparison. America, far removed 
from the danger, could get along with a few regiments, but 
France, Russia, Austria, and Italy, in direct contact with the 
peril, prepared on a scale never before known in history, 
Compulsory military service became the rule everywhere or 
the Continent. The nations of Europe transformed themselves 
into great armed camps. Army leaders, soldiers, and people 
watched the annual army maneuvers of their neighbors witl 
apprehension. Newspapers succeeded in concocting "wai 
scares/' especially between France and Germany, with dis- 
tressing frequency. The consequent state of armed peace was 
more burdensome than some wars of earlier days. To the 
people at large as well as to statesmen it brought much of the 
sacrifice, the anxiety, the depression, of real war, withoul 
war's compensating glory and excitement. 

Into this deplorable situation shot a sudden ray of hope 
It was the unheralded call issued late in August, 1898, by the 
young Czar Nicholas, summoning the nations to a conference 
to consider the means of preserving peace and of reducing 
armaments. The moment was favorable, said the summons 
it neglected to say that Prince Bismarck had died but a fe\* 
weeks before, after having been already some years out oi 
office, and that the new captain of state, Emperor "William II 
though he leaned strongly on his army, also preached peace 
It neglected also to observe that practically all the states oi 
Europe had been looking with grave suspicion, not. to say i 
little fear, on the war conducted by the United States againsl 
Spain. 

The ground of public opinion had long been under prepara- 
tion by the pacifists, already well organized, who looked or 
with increasing dread as the annual military budgets rose 
steadily and rapidly. Their great fear was that, when the 
nations some day reached the maximum possible military 
preparation, the whole world would suddenly burst into the 
flames of destructive war. With all their resources they hac 
been bringing the dreaded facts before the people in both 
Europe and America, but it needed the official utterance oi 



336 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

some one high in authority adequately to emphasize the 
portentousness of the situation. This result the ezar accom- 
plished as perhaps no one else could have done. Some of his 
words may well be quoted. 1 

He said that peace, everywhere desired, was everywhere far 
from realization. The method of preserving peace which the 
nations were all following, namely, that of steadily increas- 
ing their military forces, was not attaining the wished-for end. 
Indeed, this ever-growing militarism was having very bad 
results. "The intellectual and physical strength of the na- 
tions, labor and capital, are for the major part diverted from 
their natural application, and unproductively consumed. . . . 
National culture, economic progress, and the production of 
wealth are paralyzed or checked in their development. More- 
over, in proportion as the armaments of each power increase, 
so do they less and less fulfil the object which the govern- 
ments have set before themselves. The economic crises, due 
in great part to the system of armaments a Voutrance, and the 
continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, 
are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing 
burden, which the peoples have more and more difficulty in 
bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of things 
were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cata- 
clysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which 
make every thinking man shudder in advance. To put an 
end to these incessant armaments and to seek the means of 
warding off the calamities which are threatening the whole 
world — such is the supreme duty which is to-day imposed on 
all states." 

The thing could hardly have been better stated. Every- 
where the solemnity of the warning was understood. Every- 
where men began to talk, and the newspapers and magazines 
to be filled with articles, about the coming ' ' Disarmament Con- 
ference." The idea of disarmament, long current among 
pacifist thinkers, was seized upon as the final solution of the 

1 Of course, Nicholas II himself did not prepare the summons, fot 
which Count Mouravieff, then Russian minister of Foreign Affairs, is 
perhaps chiefly responsible. 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 33 

difficulty. Even some military men accepted the propositio 
as sound and feasible. Nevertheless, it is true the czar did nc 
himself propose complete disarmament, nor did he dare t 
hope for so much. Perhaps he would not even have wishe 
it. What he did propose was that the conference should see 
"without delay means for putting a limit to the progressiv 
increase of military and naval armaments," and to this end h 
suggested ' ' an understanding not to increase for a fixed perio 
the present effectives of the armed military and nave 
forces, and at the same time not to increase the budgets pei 
taining thereto ; and a preliminary examination of the mean 
by which a reduction might even be effected in future in th 
forces and budgets above mentioned. ' ' 

The conference met in May, 1899, at The Hague. All th 
great nations were represented and also many smaller one* 
The tensity of the international situation among the larg 
powers even at that time may be judged from the fact tha 
the capital of no first-rate nation was considered a fit plac 
for holding the conference. Indeed, even while the call to th 
conference was under consideration, several of the large state 
of Europe proceeded to increase their military forces. 

The czar had proposed a very definite program for th 
consideration of the conference. It fell naturally into thre 
parts, and was accordingly divided among three commission- 
The first dealt exclusively with the question of limitation o 
armaments, the second with various proposals to change th 
laws of war both on land and sea, and the third with th 
peaceful settlement of international disputes. 1 

It depended largely upon the first commission whether o 
not the conference was truly to become a ' ' Disarmament Cod 
ference." The discussions began with an address by th 
president, M. Beernaert of Belgium, who was followed b; 

1 The Second Hague Conference met in the same place in 1907, an 
dealt with a similar but larger program of proposals. The work c 
this second conference will be discussed in connection with that of th 
first. The holding of a third conference was prevented by the outbrea 
of war in 1914, 



338 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

M. de Staal for Russia. Both emphasized the extreme serious- 
ness of the problem, yet believed that progress could be made. 
Soon thereafter the official Russian proposals were presented, 
which can be summed up in one word : non-augmentation. In 
itself, the suggestion was certainly modest enough. Unfortu- 
nately, it was known even before the propositions could be 
discussed that certain powers, and especially Germany, were 
opposed not only to their adoption but even to consideration. 
General Gross von Schwarzhoff rose early in the meetings 
of the first commission, and after making a light jibe at a mem- 
ber from the Netherlands "who made himself a warm de- 
fender of these propositions even before they had been sub- 
mitted to us, ' ' he said : 

"I can hardly believe that among my honored colleagues 
there is a single one ready to state that his sovereign, his gov- 
ernment, is engaged in working for the inevitable ruin, the 
slow but sure annihilation, of his country. I have no mandate 
to speak for my honored colleagues, but so far as Germany is 
concerned, I am able to completely reassure her friends and 
to relieve all well-meant anxiety. The German people is not 
crushed under the weight of charges and taxes, — it is not hang- 
ing on the brink of an abyss ; it is not approaching exhaustion 
and ruin. Quite the contrary; public and private wealth is 
increasing, the general welfare and standard of life is being 
raised from one year to another. So far as compulsory mil- 
itary service is concerned, which is so closely connected with 
those questions, the German does not regard this as a heavy 
burden, but as a sacred and patriotic duty to which he owes 
his country's existence, its prosperity, and its future." The 
fine sarcasm in this speech can be appreciated only by one who 
knows the international situation as it existed at the time; but 
the assumption of Germany's superiority over any nation that 
would care to suggest limitation of armaments no one can fail 
to feel as he reads these words. 

It is probably true that, even without this open opposition 
on the part of Germany, the czar's proposals would not have 
been adopted in full at the conference of 1899. Technically 
the problem proved to be of extreme difficulty. It is proper 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 339 

to point out, however, that it was Germany which was con- 
stantly leading the way during these years in increasing arma- 
ments, that the other nations were arming in defense against 
her, and that if Germany refused to agree to non-augmenta- 
tion, no other nation dared to adopt that policy. It was finally 
on the motion of a French delegate that the proposal was 
saved from complete defeat, and held open for farther discus- 
sion by a resolution, adopted by the conference, ' ' that the 
restriction of military charges ... is extremely desirable 
for the increase of the material and moral welfare of man- 
kind." 

It is not amiss here to look forward eight years to the 
Second Conference which met in the same place and under 
the same auspices. The Russian government had in the mean- 
time suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Japanese, and 
was hardly inclined to think of nonaugmentation of arma- 
ments, far less of disarmament. Owing to the objections of 
other powers also, including Germany, the limitation of arma- 
ments was left out of the 1907 official program entirely. 
Nevertheless, the English and the American representatives 
insisted upon bringing the question forward, and in this they 
were supported by France, and also by a Russian delegate, 
M. de Nelidow. The result was the adoption once more of the 
pious resolution of 1899, and there the matter rested ! 

The Russian circular outlining a program of work for the 
First Hague Conference put the proposals for the peaceful 
settlement of disputes between nations at the bottom of the 
list. The results of these proposals were, however, so much 
better than those in other directions, that the question of im- 
proving the arbitration conventions was put first in the pro- 
gram of the 1907 conference. 

At the first conference the delegates were confronted by the 
very brief Russian preliminary proposal, and a Russian draft 
convention covering mediation, good offices, and arbitration. 
The general tenor of the proposal was that a permanent court 
of arbitration should be created to which all powers could have 
recourse when disputes of a nature that could be arbitrated 



340 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

might arise. To this plan, the American delegation and the 
representatives of other countries wanted to add a provision 
that, within definite classes of cases, the recourse to arbitra- 
tion should be compulsory. 

That the majority of the nations represented at the con- 
ference earnestly desired the consummation of this desirable 
end was clearly evident in the speeches made to the confer- 
ence. In May it appeared that the German delegates, though 
not enthusiastic, were not entirely opposed to the plan. As 
the year advanced into June, however, and the Third Commis- 
sion proceeded with its discussions, the attitude of Germany 
became clearly that of opposition. Count Minister, head of 
the German delegation, had already stated to Mr. Andrew D. 
White, head of the American delegation, "that arbitration 
must be injurious to Germany; that Germany is prepared 
for war as no other country is or can be ; that she can mobilize 
her army in ten days; and that neither France, Russia, nor 
any other power can do this. Arbitration, he said, would 
simply give rival powers time to put themselves in readiness, 
and would therefore be a great disadvantage to Germany." 1 

The rest of the nations were talking peace and arbitration. 
Germany's attitude stood out in sharp contrast, for she was 
unconsciously, and therefore naturally, showing that her trust 
lay wholly in force. But more disquieting news than this 
was yet to come. On June 9th it became known to members of 
the Third Commission that Emperor William was "deter- 
mined to oppose the whole scheme of arbitration," as Mr. 
White records, and a little later that he would insist that his 
chief allies, Austria and Italy, should stand with him in oppo- 
sition. On the 16th came the time of greatest tension. The 
German delegation received on that day — the very day when 
the sub-committee was to meet to settle the matter — "a des- 
patch from Berlin in which the German Government — which, 
of course, means the Emperor — had strongly and finally de- 
clared against everything like an arbitration tribunal." 

i Andrew D. White, Autobiography of. 1905, IT, 265. For his account 
of the First Hague Conference, see generally II, pp. 250-354. 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 341 

Germany insisted that a permanent court of arbitration 
would be impracticable and dangerous to Germany, and 
that it would derogate from her sovereignty as a nation. 
There was apparent consternation in the German delegation. 
The meeting of the sub-committee was postponed, while Pro- 
fessor Zorn, a representative of Germany, and Mr. Holls of 
the American delegation, were sent posthaste to Berlin by the 
heads of their respective delegations. Mr. Holls bore with 
him a careful and cogent letter from Mr. White to his good 
friend Baron von Billow, then German minister for foreign 
affairs, a letter which argued that it was good policy for Ger- 
many to accept the idea of creating the permanent court of 
arbitration. 

The German foreign office was at the last moment convinced 
that its opposition to the permanent tribunal would be very 
detrimental to Germany's standing in the world. New in- 
structions were issued which soon cleared the atmosphere. 
The relief which this news brought to the tense situation at 
The Hague was appreciated by no one more than by the Amer- 
ican delegates. Had Germany continued its opposition to the 
permanent court, the Conference would have ended almost in 
complete failure. Its only result would have been to empha- 
size a common belief that Germany did not wish peace. 

The adherence of the Teutonic empire was dearly bought. 
The draft convention then under consideration contained a 
clause making recourse to arbitration compulsory on the signa- 
tory powers in a few specified cases. This point Germany 
would not yield, and it was in the interest of harmony that 
the American delegation and others backed up Germany on 
this matter, and caused the clause to be stricken out. 

In the few cases settled by arbitration between 1899 and 
1907, certain defects in the convention of 1899 appeared ; but 
on the whole it worked well. Germany herself had tried the 
method, with success, and had negotiated several arbitration 
treaties. Her argument of 1899 that it was impracticable 
seemed, therefore, to have been disproved by her own policy 
and experience. Indeed, there was growing up in Germany a 



342 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

body of opinion strongly in favor of arbitration. There 
seemed to be, therefore, no longer any reason why Germany 
should oppose. 

It was now time, in 1907, to take the second step to make 
arbitration compulsory in those cases where there were no 
questions of "vital interests" or "honor" involved. Several 
proposals were made to this effect in the Second Hague Con- 
ference, among them the American. This provided that with 
certain liberal reservations legal questions and those involving 
the interpretation of treaties, where they did not involve the 
independence, vital interests, and honor of the parties, were 
always to be submitted to arbitration. This was thought to 
be a reasonable minimum requirement, that nations should 
agree not to go to war over questions entirely trivial in them- 
selves. 

Certain earty speeches by the German delegates roused the 
hopes of the conference that Germany had begun to see the 
light. The language of her representatives was certainly not 
that of opposition. Indeed, it aroused instead the enthusiasm 
and the highest hopes of the exponents of arbitration. But 
in 1907, as in 1899, these hopes were dashed to the ground. 
Germany accepted the idea of compulsory arbitration "in 
principle," but was unable to find any way around the diffi- 
culties "in practice." She could not find a "formula" which 
could be put into a general treaty for compulsory arbitration 
which would not be open to objections. Because she could not 
find such a "formula," therefore Germany had to reject the 
idea of a general treaty, and would content herself with mak- 
ing special treaties with particular countries. As a distin- 
guished South American delegate put it, this was "the death 
of arbitration." 1 

It is hard to make a summary of the progress which has re- 
sulted from the two peace conferences at The Hague. It 
is perhaps harder to give due credit to all the nations which 
were represented in those conferences of splendid concep- 
tion; it has also been said that you cannot indict a nation. 

i James Brown Scott, "The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, 
1909," vol. i, 124-131, 319-385, passim. 



THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCES 343 

But if the rulers of any nation did more than those of Ger- 
many to block the beneficent works which these conferences 
might have accomplished, it does not appear in the record. 
England being still the mistress of the seas, and likely to con- 
trol the seas in case of war, Germany was not unwilling to 
propose, with the United States, complete immunity from 
capture for private property at sea. That would have worked 
in favor of Germany, and against England. To the voice of 
peace by understanding, however, the German Imperial Gov- 
ernment would not listen. It refused to consider a limita- 
tion of armaments, even in the mild form of non-augmenta- 
tion, and in 1907 declined even to discuss the matter. 1 When 
a permanent arbitration court was proposed, it at first rejected 
the idea in toto, being won over in the end only by compro- 
mises and with the greatest difficulty. Later when it was 
proposed to make arbitration compulsory in a few classes of 
cases, the German refusal was absolute. Thus did the rulers 
of Germany purpose to keep their hands free to use diplomacy 
or force as they saw best. The world must judge from what 
has since occurred on which of these forms of persuasion they 
were already planning to rely. 

GERMAN WAR PRACTICES 

The principle of sparing non-combatants so far as possible in warfare 
had been slowly evolved since far back in the Middle Ages, but had not 
before 1864 been finally formulated. It has often been violated, but never 
so flagrantly and withal so methodically as in the present war. German 
generals have scoffed at the weak sentimentality of the rule. The great 
General von Moltke declared in 1881, "I cannot, in any way, agree with 
the Declaration of St. Petersburg when it pretends that 'the weakening 
of the military forces of the enemy' constitutes the only legitimate 
method of procedure in war. No! One must attack all the resources 
of the enemy government, his finances, his railroads, his stock of pro- 
visions and even his prestige." Three years earlier General von Hart- 
mann wrote that "whenever a national war breaks out, terrorism be- 
comes a necessary military principle." "It is a gratuitous illusion to 

i England twice proposed directly to Germany a mutual reduction of 
naval armaments, once in 1906 and once at a later date. In both cases 
Germany answered by voting increases Cf. the speech of Dr, Eduard 
David, a German Social Democrat, quoted in Notestein and Stoll's "Con- 
quest and Kultmy' 1917, p. 49-50. 



344 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

suppose that modern war does not demand far more brutality, far more 
violence, and an action far more general than was formerly the case." 
"When international war has burst upon us, terrorism becomes a prin- 
ciple made necessary by military considerations." A year after the lirst 
Hague Peace Conference, Kaiser Wilhelm, in bidding farewell to his 
troops bound for China, said, "As soon as you come to blows with the 
enemy he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown! No prisoners will 
be taken! As the Huns, under King Attila, made a name for them- 
selves, which is still mighty in traditions and legends to-day, may the 
name of German be so fixed in China by your deeds, that no Chinese 
shall ever again dare even to look at a German askance. . . . Open the 
way for Kultur once for all." The "German War Book" itself advises 
officers against the "sentimentality and flabby emotion" of humanitarian 
considerations in time of war, and teaches that "certain severities are 
indispensable in war, nay more, that the only true humanity very often 
lies in a ruthless application of them." Therefore, war should be made 
against the entire "moral and material resources" of the enemy. An 
especially good treatment of this question will be found in "German 
War Practices," by Dana C. Munro, George C. Sellery, and August C. 
Krey, a pamphlet issued by the Committe on Public Information, Wash- 
ington, D. C, 1917. 

It should also be mentioned that in the Hague Peace Conferences, 
Germany stood out against certain changes in the laws of war which 
would have made war more humane, and refused to ratify various pro- 
visions of the laws of war embodied in the conventions drawn up by 
those conferences. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 1 

WHILE Bismarck the Old and then William the Young 
were building the strong new Germany, were increas- 
ing her army, welding her alliances, multiplying her com- 
merce, and rendering her nobles, bankers, and university pro- 
fessors the loud champions of this autocracy made modern and 
efficient, two far less distinguished personages were uncon- 
sciously doing their share to bring nearer the day of 
Armageddon. One of these was a philosopher who died in 
1900, after having suffered from a disordered intellect since 
about 1890. The other was an historian who with less shaken 
powers continued a leader until close to his end in 1896. The 
first was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ; the second was Hein- 
rich von Treitschke. The influence of these two men, even in 
militarized Prussia, went far to justify the well-worn saying 
that "the pen is mightier than the sword." 

Nietzsche was anything but an admirer of the Prussian 
system. But he supplied abstract philosophy which was to 
give convenient justification to the ideas and purposes that 
were seething in the brains of ambitious men who dominated 
the new German empire. He couched in terse, aphoristic lan- 
guage precepts worthy of an ultra-militarist. He treated all 
the old moral laws and humane conventions that had seemed to 
tie down the unlimited ambitions of men, as a remnant of 
"Christian superstition," and as representing merely the 
virtues of the weak, not of the strong, progressive and vic- 

1 The abundant evidence as to the ideas, ambitions and general methods 
of Pan-Germanism has been excellently assembled and translated in 
Notestein and Stoll's "Conquest and Kultur" (Committee of Public 
Information, Washington, D. C, 1917). The present chapter represents 
the merest skimming of a great subject. 

345 



346 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

torious. 1 His ideal of the "superman" was to be developed 
by giving unbridled freedom in the struggle for existence, and 
he was to be a ruthless spirit who would seek only his own 
power and pleasure, and would know not pity. 

Here are some of the aphorisms in Nietzsche's famous book, 
"Thus Spake Zarathustra, " wherein the modern philosopher 
couched his doctrines in the language of an ancient sage : 

"Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, — and a short peace 
more than a long." 

"Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say 
unto you, 'It is the good war which halloweth every cause. War 
and courage have done more great things than charity. 1 " 

" 'Thou shalt not rob ! Thou shalt not slay V — such precepts were 
once called holy. ... Is not all life robbing and slaying? 

"This new table, my brethren, put I up over you, — 'Become 
hard!'" 

Terribly was the world to see some of these sayings trans- 
lated into practice in 1914. 

Nietzsche did not create Pan-Germanism nor all the bellicose 
things that went with it. He did supply it, however, with a 
philosophic stimulus and semblance of intellectual authority 
which were to fertilize its soil. The poor lunatic who died at 
the dawn of the twentieth century thus was to be one of the 
unconscious producers of the World War. 

Mightier by far in his influence was Treitschke. He was 
a native of Saxony, but in 1866 withdrew to Prussia and 
gave his whole sympathies and energies heartily to upholding 

i Despite their practical acceptance of the ethical teachings of 
Nietsche, the Pan-German leaders were by no means atheistical in 
their formal professions of faith. Bernhardi, and the less extreme 
Rohrbach, both indicate their complete sympathy with Protestant 
Christianity as they understand it They are quite critical of Catholi- 
cism. It is not quite clear, however, whether they object to the Cath- 
olics on theological grounds, or rather because they hold that it is im- 
possible to be obedient to the Pope and to remain really good Germans. 
There are some reasons for saying the Pan-German schemings included 
ultimately the idea of a strictly national Teutonic church, into which all 
true sons of the expanded Fatherland were to be induced to enter. 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 347 

the Bismarckian regime. He became official historian upon 
the rise of the Hohenzollern power, 1 and from 1874 to 1896 he 
was the most distinguished professor of history in the Univer- 
sity of Berlin. No ordinary lecture room was his. His lec- 
tures on German history attracted not merely his colleagues 
but officials, administrative officers, and often extremely dis- 
tinguished men. The fascination of his eloquence was such 
that he cast a spell over all his hearers. Young men of fam- 
ily, the leaders of the next generation, left his presence in a 
glow of enthusiasm. He wielded an influence equal to that 
of many of the Kaiser's ministers. The government did well 
to honor him — for he defended the cause of military monarchy 
with remarkable adroitness, proving to all who fell under the 
spell of his argument that for Germany and for Prussia the 
rule of the Hohenzollern meant the highest blessing and 
destiny. 

Much that Treitschke taught was pure and noble. He 
kindled in his hearers a keen patriotic ardor, and an intense 
longing to do or die for native land. "Patriotism," he would 
tell them earnestly, "is the highest and holiest of passions." 
He would also tell his students that war might come at any 
moment and they must live in constant readiness for the un- 
avoidable summons. To a large extent, therefore, consider- 
ing the chronically dangerous state of Europe, Treitschke was 
only saying impressively what any professor in England or 
France might have stated to warn his audience. 

But Treitschke used his eloquence to preach a political 
philosophy which not merely extolled the Hohenzollern regime 
in Germany, not merely taught general lessons in self-sacrific- 
ing patriotism, but made the young men, who sat at his feet, 
go from the lecture hall with their heads buzzing with notions 
which menaced the future peace of the world. 2 

i His "History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century" is a remark- 
able achievement, though broken off (because of his death) with the year 
1847. 

2 It must be remembered that Treitschke's lectures were attended by 
the scions of the upper classes, young noblemen, future generals and 



348 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Treitschke in substance taught that the state was the center 
and acme of all human existence; that men could not live 
without it, that its necessities exceeded the necessities of 
any one of its members, and that it was not governed by the 
moral laws or lines of conduct binding upon mere individuals. 
The state was all-powerful, or it ceased to be a real state. In 
dealing with other states its policy was merely one of expedi- 
ency. "A state cannot bind its will for the future as against 
another state. A state has no superior judge over itself and it 
will conclude all its treaties with this tacit reservation." In 
other words, a treaty was a mere convention to be repudiated 
when it became convenient to the government which had 
sworn to it. Between the various states there was inevitably 
a constant struggle for existence with only the strongest per- 
mitted to survive. " Empires rise and grow strong, and little 
commonwealths and principalities cease to be states." As 
for such an "abnormal" country as neutralized Belgium, 
Treitschke wrote: "Belgium is neutral, it is [therefore] 
mutilated by its very nature" — i.e., it has not the power of 
ordinary states to assert itself. Wars are terrible to the 
individual but very necessary to the true life of the state. 
"The establishment of an international court of arbitration 
as a permanent institution is irreconcilable with the nature 
of the state. ... To the end of history weapons will maintain 
their right; and precisely herein lies the sanctity of war." 
Or again: "We have learned to recognize the moral majesty 
of war precisely in those of its characteristics which seem to 
superficial observers brutal and inhuman." Or still more 
grimly : ' ' The living God will take care that war shall always 
return as a terrible medicine for the human race." 

As to the duty of Germany to expand her power by force of 
arms Treitschke had not the least doubt. ' ' In the division of 
the non-European world among the European powers Ger- 
many has hitherto failed to get its share; and the question 
whether we can become an oversea power involves our very 

diplomats and many others who by 1900 were helping to shape the policy 
of Germany. His essays and histories (very readable) also had enor- 
mous circulation and carried the same potent message. 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 349 

existence as a power of the first rank. " Or in another place : 
''The result of our next victorious war must, if possible, be 
the acquisition of something in the way of a colony. ' ' x 

But this redoubtable professor did more than preach pagan 
generalities to his audience of German leaders for the 
twentieth century. He was a man of sharp, hard interna- 
tional prejudices which he voiced continually. When he 
began to lecture at Berlin the relations of England and Ger- 
many were correct, friendly, at times even cordial. When he 
died they had become much worse. After his death, while the 
seeds he had sown germinated in the intellectual life of his 
nation, Britain and the Prussianized empire passed from one 
stage of hostility to another until the day of great darkness. 
Von Treitschke was by no means the sole cause of this enmity, 
but upon him rests a fearfully large fraction of the responsi- 
bility. He devoted his "rhetoric, invective and ridicule to 
making Britain odious in the eyes of the generation which 
heard him with enthusiasm and read his book as a gospel. " 
In a long series of lectures and writings he dwelt on the un- 
doubted shortcomings of England, exaggerated them, and 
made them appear a direct menace to Germany. He de- 
nounced the action of British sea-power as "organized 
piracy.' ' He treated British expressions of love of humanity 
and fair play as a smug hypocrisy that covered sheer com- 
mercialism. In his history he wrote of England: "That 
last indispensable bulwark of society — the duel — went out of 
fashion; the riding-whip supplanted the sword and pistol, 
and this triumph of vulgarity was celebrated as a triumph of 
enlightenment." All British foreign policy was directed 
merely to keep other nations divided and weak in order that 
British merchants might bleed and plunder them. He denied 
to the English soldiers and sailors even the common attribute 
of valor, as the prime factor in building the British empire. 

i These quotations are all from his "Politik." There are good ex- 
amples of the political opinions of Treitschke in the collection of German 
sentiments, "Out of Their Own Mouths," pp. 41-48, (N. Y. 1917), as 
well as in Notestein and Stoll's excellent "Conquest and Kultur," 
Washington, D. C, 1917. 



350 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

That fabric, he taught, was created by the geographical po- 
sition of the British Isles, by the supineness of other nations, 
by the measureless duplicity of British ministers and by the 
natural and innate hypocrisy of their people as a whole. 
Built, however, out of such rotten materials, without a worthy 
national life behind it, the dominions of the London govern- 
ment were vast and pretentious indeed but easy to overthrow 
by a power possessed of true valor. And Treitschke was sure 
that all the world would join in one rejoicing ptean when the 
British colossus crumbled. 

Touching other nations, France, Austria, Russia, etc., his 
opinion was sufficiently disparaging. Of America he knew 
little and cared less. He ridiculed certain unlovely phases of 
our democracy as the reports of our political inefficiency and 
corruption came to him; 1 but America (in his day) had no 
outlying colonies to excite his cupidity. England was the 
true child of his hate ; and concerning her, he uttered a 
famous and ominous word: "With Austria, with France, 
with Russia we have already squared accounts; 2 the last set- 
tlement — with England — seems likely to be the longest and 
hardest." 

Such a dictum coming from the most influential professor 
in the most influential German university spelled calamity for 
the human race. 

It is a rule in history that at certain recurring intervals 
some particular nation feels itself summoned by a high, as it 
were divine, destiny to extend its dominion over all other 
nations by the sword, and to establish something approximat- 
ing a world empire. And when such an attempt is made there 
is no real peace for the earth until the attempt has failed after 
perhaps generations of fire, blood, and human agony. As- 

i It must be remembered that in the eighties and nineties America 
presented certain abuses in her public life which have been, in part at 
least, remedied today. 

2 Note this necessity of "squaring accounts," i.e., of humiliating and 
dismembering by warfare. Treitschke and all the Pan-German writers 
after him seem to treat this as an inevitable part of successful national 
existence — to aim a great stroke at each neighboring state in turn. 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 351 

Syria was vexed by this "world-empire microbe" until Nine- 
veh, the wicked capital of her pitiless and despoiling kings, 
vanished amid smoke and flame. Persia had it likewise, until 
Xerxes ? s arrogant hopes went down amid the crash of the 
ships at Salamis. Rome had it ; and being, on the whole, the 
worthiest nation that ever made the attempt at dominion, 
achieved for a while a great success ; yet in the end the Roman 
Empire perished — and great was the fall thereof. The Arabs 
in the early Middle Ages had it, going forth at Mohammed's 
summons to their fanaticism to win all the earth for the one 
Allah and his prophet— so threatening the life of Christian 
Europe till they broke their lances on the iron wall of Charles 
Martel's Franks at Tours. The Spaniards had it in the day 
of Philip II, until William the Silent, Queen Elizabeth and 
Henry of Navarre between them blasted their ambitions. 
Then twice, under differing circumstances, France was pos- 
sessed by this hunger for unbounded power. It required an 
alliance of practically all Europe through at least four great 
wars to keep Louis XIV from establishing a lordship over all 
contemporaneous kings. It required a still mightier exertion 
by all Europe to prevent Napoleon I from founding a more 
extensive empire than the Cassars. All these attempts (save 
temporarily that of Rome) failed, and left the aggressor 
broken and bleeding ; but until they had failed there was anx- 
iety in almost every palace and hovel throughout civilization. 
Early in the twentieth century there began to be ominous 
signs that yet another great nation was being possessed by this 
most malific of demons, — that it was being induced, as one of 
the prime champions of this terrible gospel frankly confessed, 
to follow the path which leads to "world power or downfall." 
By 1900 the new German empire seemed an astounding suc- 
cess in almost every respect save that of developing political 
liberty for its subjects. It is not amazing that its patriotic 
admirers looked confidently from a glorious past to a yet 
more glorious future. Many of the things they hoped for no 
honest non-German had a right to ask that they should dis- 
avow. Surely no Englishman, Frenchman, or American had a 
right to tell his fellow in Germany that the Fatherland ought 



352 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

not to seek for greater commerce, industries, riches, general 
prosperity, honorable prestige in diplomacy and national in- 
fluence; nor to desire seasonably a great marine, a colonial 
empire and all the other things which in a physical sense 
causes a nation to be reckoned "great." In the past indeed 
the achievements of Germany had been in the cultural field 
rather than in the material, but if later the Teutons chose 
e. g., to develop their steel industry rather than their poetry, 
that was their own affair. There was bound to be a certain 
amount of friction and pettiness all around, as the older 
nations were elbowed aside to make room in the world for 
the lusty new empire; but this empire itself was admittedly 
so powerful that there was little danger of its being refused a 
high position unless its manners should be very brusk. In 
short, considering the population, intelligence, potential 
wealth and actual armed strength of the Bismarckian empire 
there would have seemed little chance of its failing to win a 
reasonable "place in the sun," provided its rulers were diplo- 
matic, its policies moderate and its patriots able to learn that 
hard word for the ardent — "wait." 

Of course, from the founding of the Empire at Versailles, 
there had been millions of voices ready to acclaim Germany as 
the ' ' greatest nation in the world. ' ' There was no menace to 
the peace of mankind in that. Frenchmen, Britons and 
Americans were always saying the same about their own 
lands — with contemptuous pity for the non-favored remainder 
of humanity which did not happen to be governed from Paris, 
London or Washington respectively. But now that France 
was chastened, her neighbors did not fear wanton aggression 
from her. Queen Victoria's vast dominions held almost no 
civilized white men under a galling subjection, save the 
eternally baffling Irish, and the conquest of European lands 
by Englishmen was unthinkable. As for American boasts, 
before 1898 the United States army and navy had been insig- 
nificant, and even after the war with Spain the army con- 
tinued so small as to be incapable of invading the smallest 
European state. Nobody, save possibly certain ill-mannered 
South American dictators, quailed at the thought of American 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 353 

aggression. But as Germans repeated their self-confident 
boasts, the world began to grow uneasy, and with reason. 

It is a law, almost as certain as that of gravitation, that 
great and growing nations attract unto themselves new power 
and influence by no very deliberate effort but simply because 
they are great and are growing. No country could have be- 
come at once the factory and the school-house of the world as 
Germany was becoming and not have likewise come to exercise 
a simply incalculable power, not by pushing any aggressive 
designs, but merely by making it clear that it w T ould defend 
its recognized and reasonable rights. In 1914 the admitted 
strength of the German empire was so vast that only a nation 
whose statesmen were fools would have deliberately sought a 
quarrel with it. By the mere influence of economic attraction, 
the Scandinavian lands, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland 
were being led half -consciously and not very unwillingly into 
the circle of Berlin influence. The same was even true of 
Austria, Italy and to a great extent Russia. The ties, racial, 
intellectual and commercial, which Germany was extending 
around America were to become patent to all men in 1914. 
Everything seemed coming the Germans' way. Their govern- 
ment had only to conciliate foreign opinion, create a reputa- 
tion for fair and friendly dealing, make it clear that com- 
mercial relations did not have behind them political scheming, 
keep a firm front in England, France or Russia, the only 
possible military rivals really menacing, — and the empire 
would have invariably advanced from glory to glory. It 
might have been predicted that by 1940, let one say, Germany 
would reach a position of such wealth, such influence, such 
prestige, that by a magnet-attraction the lesser nations of 
northern Europe would have been drawn into her federal 
system upon terms honorable for all parties, and no nation 
outside the Teutonic pale would have had the courage to com- 
mand them nay. 1 

1 1 know that shortly before 1914, as well as earlier, there was much 
complaint in commercial circles in Amsterdam as to the limitations 
imposed on Dutch enterprise by being confined to so small a country, 
and considerable discussion of the great advantages of a proper fed- 



354 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Such a placid waiting for almost inevitable results was not 
to satisfy the generation that had fed on the glories of Moltke 
and spent its days admiring the magnificent edifice of Bis- 
marck. Not honorable leadership in very many forms of cul- 
tural endeavor; not a position as a nation which no coalition 
would lightly provoke or menace; not a hegemony, even, in 
the brotherhood of friendly empires working for the common 
betterment of man — not these were the ambitions of the 
framers of high policy for the new Germany. Ever more 
clearly developed their keen intention to found a Teutonic 
world empire and to found it immediately — and to do this 
preferably with the sword. 

Therefore, in the language of the ancient mystic, instead 
of friendliness and peace there came forth the "pale horse, 
and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed 
with him." 

It is a difficult and dangerous matter to assume what are 
the determining motives and intentions of a great people, 
before a historical issue passes from words to deeds. Eng- 
land, France, America and every other mighty nation had its 
irresponsible talkers and writers, and by a careful selection of 
their utterances it would have been possible to fasten upon 
their respective countries every kind of criminal intention. 
Before 1914 it was well known that there were a great num- 
ber of noisy fire-eaters and advocates of unscrupulous expan- 
sion in Germany, but not many took them very seriously. As 
the American President, who was also a professional historian 
and teacher of political science, declared in 1917, "The 
statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose [of the Pan- 
Germans] was incredible, paid little attention; [they] re- 
garded what German professors expounded in their class- 
rooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal 
of German policy as rather the dreams of minds detached from 

eration with Germany These sentiments would not have been dimin- 
ished if Berlin had played its cards well. The Dutch East Indies would 
have been a colonial acquisition amply fitted to satisfy the appetite of a 
Treitschke. 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 355 

practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of Ger- 
man destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers. ' ' x 
Only after the terrific events which began late in July, 1914, 
did men realize, as this same statesman added, ''what con- 
crete plans, what well advanced intrigues, lay back of what 
the professors and writers were saying, and [that the rulers 
of Germany] were glad [to have these plans] go forward un- 
molested. ' ' 

Between the fall of Bismarck and the outbreak of the great 
war twenty-four years later, there was a constant current of 
literature in Germany which forms the evidences of what 
has been styled the "Pan-Germanic movement," i.e., the move- 
ment that aimed to make the world JiZ-German, just as rap- 
idly as possible. 2 This literature illustrates the state of mind 
and the developing intentions of the men who controlled the 
destinies of the Hohenzollern empire. It emanates mainly 
from three classes of people who were now in close working 
alliance — the Prussian military aristocrats, the university 
professors (favored by the government and in turn its con- 
venient mouthpieces and defenders 3 ), and the great manufac- 
turers and merchants who were hungering and thirsting for 
new fields of trade to be opened and for new colonies to exploit. 
It was a movement on the whole much stronger in Prussia than 
in South Germany ; somewhat more favored by Lutherans than 
by Catholics; and shared in feebly, or partially opposed, by 

i President Wilson, "Flag Day Address," June 14, 1917. 

2 In its more limited form Pan-Germanism aimed for the "recovery" 
of the "lost Teutonic lands," i. e., Switzerland, Holland, Austria, Kur- 
land, Scandinavia, etc. This local ambition of course fitted in well 
with the more grandiose schemes for world empire. 

s Despite much proud talk of "academic freedom," it was practically 
Impossible for a German professor to get preferment in the universities 
unless he made himself agreeable, or better still, zealously useful to the 
governing powers. An "ordinary" (i. e., permanently appointed and 
full rank) professor was free to exploit bizarre theories as to the atomic 
theory or the date of the battle of Marathon, but he was never suffered 
to carry with impunity his playing with academic quiddities over into 
systematic undermining attacks upon the government. 

The universities were prime agents in the preaching of militarism 
and of the doctrine of governmental infallibility. 



356 THE ROOTS OP THE WAR 

the lower middle classes, the artisans and of course the social- 
ists. Its patrons were from the first men on the very foot- 
steps of the throne. The wealth of the huge Krupp artillery 
works and of the other great corporations gave it the control 
of influential newspapers. In the later stages of its propa- 
ganda it certainly received almost open approval from the gov- 
ernment. The crown prince of Germany practically avowed 
himself its champion; the emperor, although compelled to 
remain formally aloof, unless he would give mortal offense to 
foreign powers, gave it encouragement by countless broad 
hints and speeches. Finally, in 1914, the condition of Europe 
being ripe, in the opinion of these titled propagandists, to 
pass from theorizing to performance, and the public opinion 
of Germany now being worked up to a suitable pitch, they 
very abruptly stopped the printing press and drew the sword. 
The rest of the story is military history. 

The literature of Pan-Germanism is vast: books, pamphlets, 
editorials without number. To summarize it fairly is hardly 
possible. The most that can be done is to indicate what 
seem to have been the best established parts in the Pan-Ger- 
man program and to select the writings of one or two arch- 
prophets of this fiery gospel as fair examples of the arguments 
of its lesser devotees. 

Treitschke and Nietzsche had blazed the way clearly. The 
world was to be inherited hj a race of supermen and those 
supermen were the Germans. Grave professors explained 
that Dante, Shakespeare, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Voltaire 
and other intellectual paladins owed their greatness to the 
fact that they were really of pure or at least of mixed Teu- 
tonic blood. ''The numerous busts of Julius Caesar show a 
thoroughly Teutonic type of skull and face," wrote an autho- 
rity on anthropology, and he went on to claim the like race 
traits for Alexander the Great. 1 This same professor as- 
serted: "The Teutons are the aristocracy of humanity; the 
Latins, on the contrary, belong to the degenerate mob"; and 
again, "whosoever has the characteristics of the Teutonic 
race is superior. . . . All dark people are mentally inferior, 

i Ludwigr Woltmann, "Politische Anthropologic" (1903). 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 357 

because they belong to the passive races. . . . The cultural 
value of a nation is measured by the quantity of Teutonism 
it contains." So convinced were these experts of the super- 
iority of the Teutonic peoples that to that great dominant 
branch of the white race ordinarily known as "Aryan" or 
"Indo-European" the ethnologists of Germany regularly 
gave the name " Indo-Germanic " : implying that of all the 
members of that race which had settled in Europe only the 
German part need be reckoned with seriously — Greeks, Ro- 
mans, Celts, Slavs, etc., being too insignificant to count! 

A typical instance of German self-sufficiency was illustrated to the 
author when a few years ago he interrogated some intelligent friends 
in Leipzig as to the German love of Shakespere, and chanced to remark 
that "Shakespere was an Englishman." He was at once assured that 
Shakespere was "truly German" in everything but the accident of his 
birth. As for his foreign language, so excellent were the translations 
by Schlegel, and others, that the translations were actually improve- 
ments upon the original, many new shades of meaning, etc., being de- 
veloped. Besides Shakespere's English was hopelessly archaic for a 
modern British or American audience, while the German translations 
were strictly up-to-date, and could be understood by everybody. There- 
fore it were better, if possible, to read Shakespere in German than in 
the original. All this was advanced quite seriously! 

Not merely however were the Teutonic peoples incompar- 
ably the superior race in all civilization but, being thus gifted, 
it was incumbent upon them to carry the blessings of their 
Kitltur (i. e., general civilization, national pose and philosophy 
of life) out to the remainder of the planet. The clearest 
statements of this self-assurance came indeed after the great 
war began in 1914, when it was necessary to preach a very ro- 
bust doctrine to demonstrate to the world that German victory 
was essential for the salvation of the race; but the idea was 
developed broadly enough earlier. An author whose influence 
and work will be discussed presently, wrote in 1911 these 
terse words, after speaking of the admirable patriotism of 
Japan: "We Germans have a far greater and more urgent 
duty towards civilization than the Great Asiatic power. We 
. . . can fulfill it only by the sword. ' ' 1 

i Bernhardi, "Germany and the Kext War," p. 258, 



358 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

This duty of Germanizing the world was of course all the 
more justifiable because the Teutonic race was only at the 
beginning of its unlimited capacity for achievement. It was 
not "degenerate" and "effeminate" like the French, "sav- 
age" like the Russian, "commercialized," "sordid" and 
"sodden in repose" like the English: nor for that matter 
"undisciplined," "lawless," and "miserably governed" like 
the people of the United States. As early as 1897 Fritz Bley, 
a writer of considerable influence, put the case thus: "We 
are the most capable nation in every field of science and in 
every branch of the fine arts. We are the best colonists, the 
best mariners and even the best merchants. And yet we do 
not enter into our share of the heritage of the world. . . . 
That the German empire is not the close but the beginning of 
our national development is an obvious truth [as yet grasped 
only] ... by a small body of cultured men. ' ' x 

As Germans looked about the world they found, neverthe- 
less, that the other nations were hardly as yet prepared to 
make that ungrudging admission of Teutonic superiority 
which the sons of the Fatherland were anxious to demand. 
They lamented the fact that some millions of their fellow- 
countrymen had emigrated, especially to America and Brazil, 
and were, for the time being at least, "lost" to kaiser and 
country. It is true there were schemes for linking up some 
kind of connection with America and more definite schemes 
for downright absorption of southern Brazil ; nevertheless, the 
situation was unsatisfactory. The development of commercial 
and industrial life in Germany did indeed stop the emigra- 
tion, but it did not stop the desire for foreign fields of ex- 
ploitation. "We have shown already," declared an extremely 
moderate writer, "that the German labor at home is fully 
capable of feeding our people despite their increase. It is 
therefore no longer the thought for his daily bread which sends 
a German forth, but the love of enterprise and the desire of 
shaping his life along broader and freer lines than is possible 
at home. ' ' 2 Or, as less delicate pamphleteers made it evident, 

i Fritz Bley, "Die Weltstellung des Deutschstums," pp. 21, 22. 
sRohrback, "German World Policies" (translation, p. 138). Rohr- 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 359 

colonies were still needed — not for the sake of surplus popula- 
tion but for exploitation. The young Prussian officers and 
money-kings filled their heads with visions of great pro- 
consulships, lording it over millions of trembling Asiatics or 
negroes. The Belgian possession of the Congo was frankly 
coveted, and influential hints were thrown out as to its ac- 
quisition by trade or "purchase." What use had a petty 
kingdom like Belgium for a vast tropical realm worthy the 
best attention of a mighty empire ? It is true that the African 
colonies Germany already possessed brought her much ex- 
pense, a considerable number of scandals and very little profit : 
as well as in Southwest Africa, a rather serious war with the 
natives. However that was merely because unkind destiny 
had forced Germany to enter the lists as a partitioner of 
Africa among the last. 

Since the Dark Continent already had been divided among 
the Europeans it was obvious that for the Kaiser's govern- 
ment to extend its share must be at someone else's expense. 
This, however, was discussed calmly. Belgian Congo was 
within the dreams of acquisition ; so were the colonies of weak 
Portugal : and for a while it seemed as if the British grip on 
South Africa was very feeble. The resistance of the Boers 
awakened all manner of Pan-Germanic hopes. Public opinion 
ran almost irresistibly in their favor when from 1898 to 1902, 
they struggled bravely if vainly against British over-lordship. 
If Germany had possessed a strong navy at the time, probably 
popular clamor in favor of the Boers would have forced some 
action destructive to the peace of Europe. The sympathy for 
the Boers was not all of it chivalrous feeling for the "under 
dog." It sprang also out of a keen expectation that a weak 
Boer republic could exist only under the protecting a3gis of 
the Fatherland. 1 But if British lands were not to be won, 
there also were the ample colonies of decadent, defeated, and 

bach is a very moderate writer, who did not sympathize with the more 
rabid type of Pan-Germanism. 

1 1 remember well how bitterly at the time intelligent Germans de- 
plored their inability to help the Boers "and quite honorably to get a 
grip for ourselves on South Africa," 



360 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

despised France. The Third Republic had no need of her 
great chain of African colonies: her population was station- 
ary and her commerce unaggressive. The great empire she 
was flinging out across Algeria and the deserts clear to the 
Sahara was an abortion of nature : something she did not need, 
and something her German rival desired sorely. In 1914 it 
was sufficiently clear that Ahab had been looking eagerly upon 
Naboth's vineyard when the German Chancellor was quite 
willing to assure England that in event of war his govern- 
ment would respect the European territories of France, but 
that he could give no assurances about the French colonies. 

Outside of Africa there were the hopes as to north China, 
where in 1897 an available harbor (Kiau-Chau) and a large 
circuit of hinterland had been forcibly "leased" from a very 
feeble native government. But here also the barriers of 
diplomacy hemmed in the hopes for Teutonic expansion. 
British, American and Japanese pressure made it impossible 
for Germany to grow peaceably at the expense of China, and 
William II consented with outward cheerfulness to the John 
Hay doctrine of the "Open Door." 

Africa was thus closed to peaceful annexation: so was 
China. The few isles that could be snapped up in Oceania, — 
the Carolines, part of Samoa, the Solomon group, etc., — were 
mere mouthfuls for a giant's appetite. There remained the 
possibility of South American colonies. Here the natives, 
"Indians with a veneer of Spanish pseudo-culture," were 
indeed somewhat beneath contempt, but the Monroe Doctrine 
was an inconvenient barrier. In 1902, an attempt had been 
made by Germany, after picking a quarrel with Venezuela, 
to make some headway towards the "temporary occupation" 
of a desirable harbor. Instantly it had been evident that 
President Roosevelt was prepared to thwart such an under- 
taking with the full strength of the United States fleet. 
William II was in no condition then for a sudden attack on 
America. The proposition therefore had to be dropped. 1 

i In 1902, the year that President Roosevelt concentrated the Ameri- 
can fleet in the West Indies, and then served what amounted to an 
informal ultimatum upon Germany to desist in her schemes to secure 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 361 

Then finally Germany made an attempt to elbow France 
out of Morocco, the one part of Africa not hitherto pre- 
empted, and which was fairly available for white settlement. 
This attempt, as will be elsewhere described (see p. 409), 
ended in diplomatic failure, and won for the Kaiser's gov- 
ernment not much beyond the black looks of France and Eng- 
land and a little extra land in Central Africa. The Ger- 
man appetite for colonies seemed unlikely to be sated by any 
peaceful means. 

Whether colonies were really essential to the industrial and 
commercial life of Germany or whether, when its trade with 
such lands as England and America was advancing with leaps 
and bounds, their economic happiness and the national future 
demanded expansion beyond seas, the Pan-Germans waited 
not to ask. Despite their unconcealed dislike and scorn 
for things English, the junker lords of the new generation 
never concealed their covetous admiration for the British 
colonial empire. Why should a young nobleman of Pome- 
rania or Brandenburg spend his days in the petty routine 

a naval base in Venezuela, there occurred this incident. Two American 
gentlemen, on whose accuracy and judgment I implicitly rely, were at 
an open-air restaurant in a small German city. They had been on a 
long tour, had purchased many articles of clothing of German manu- 
facture and did not probably, at first glance, betray themselves as 
American excursionists. At the other end of their table two German 
naval officers of the junior grades seated themselves. These men fell 
presently into a violent discussion as to some point in naval strategy 
and tactics. Presently the Americans were startled to hear such names 
as "Long Island," "Block Island," "Sandy Hook," "Connecticut," etc. 
Suddenly the two officers realized that they were being followed with 
intense interest and that their table-companions were Americans who 
understood German. The officers abruptly rose, called the waiter and 
paid their bill, whereupon the older officer said in excellent English, 
"You must not take our professional argument too seriously: we have 
only good will for your great and very interesting country." — The 
"professional argument" had been as to whether the best method for 
a naval attack on New York was via Sandy Hook or Long Island Sound. 
Very soon after that the German government sent Prince Henry to 
America with his lips dropping honey and friendship. The German 
fleet at that time was manifestly unequal to a contest in American 
waters, especially in view of the complete absence of coaling stations. 



362 THE ROOTS OP THE WAR 

of home army life, working up to be colonel or even general 
in a little garrison city, when his contemporary at Oxford 
or Cambridge was training himself to go possibly to India 
with a great "presidency" over millions of natives as the 
reasonable goal for his ambition? The British empire fas- 
cinated the second generation in the new German empire, 
even while they execrated all traits British. 

There was one other possible line for expansion. Austria 
was falling more and more under German influence. Franz 
Josef was almost in his dotage. The Vienna statesmen were 
mediocre and pliable. The Magyar leaders, needing Ger- 
man help against their Slavic fellow-citizens, were quite open 
to suggestions from Berlin. Working through Austria, Ger- 
many could strengthen her influence on the Balkan states; 
already German influence was dominant at Constantinople. 
The Balkans, and still more the whole weak Turkish Empire, 
might become Teutonic domain-lands : and once possessed 
of the Tigro-Euphrates valley German influence could spread 
around the Persian Gulf and turn the flank of the British road 
to India and the Far East. But here again there was noth- 
ing for it but to wait. William II could stiffen up Abdul 
Hamid to defy alternately England and Russia: but neither 
of these powers was disposed to see Germany change herself 
from the mere ally of the Sultan into the actual possessor and 
mistress of his lands. Once more there was no new soil for 
Teutonism without fighting. The German had become a can- 
didate for colonial empire very late. 

Under these circumstances a public opinion, fed upon the 
traditions of Bismarck, the lectures of Treitschke and the mili- 
tary history of Frederick the Great and of Moltke, was ready 
enough with its concrete philosophy. The State constituting 
the highest of all possible human interests, and being bound 
by none of the ordinary moral laws, must advance these in- 
terests by whatever means were possible. Peaceable means 
of course were ordinarily the best: but not merely was war 
useful as a final expedient, it was sometimes preferable to 
peace, even when peace could win its end. 

Never since the days of Sennacherib, unless possibly in the 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 363 

tents of Attila the Hun or Timour the Tartar, was the duty 
of living by the sword more exultantly taught. "Perpetual 
peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War 
is part of the eternal order instituted by God," the great 
Moltke had written in 1880, and a generation of ardent 
officers, eager to translate their science into practice, had 
gladly echoed the saying. The good end of the armed struggle 
of course justified the means. "A nation's field of labor, 
its land, must satisfy its people as to character, quality and 
extent. If it is not satisfactory, the nation must stretch 
itself, extend itself over the territory of others and gain 
new land in the selective struggle. ... It would be unjust 
and immoral if a noble nation were to restrict its increase of 
population because of lack of room, while lower races have 
room to spare." So wrote Klaus Wagner in 1906, and went 
on to argue that the Darwinian law of the struggle for exist- 
ence made wars of conquest mere proper fulfillments of the 
laws of nature, and to add the corollary that if one nation 
seems possessed of territory another may need later, to attack 
this overwealthy neighbor "is a struggle for the national 
future, for unity, independence and free soil. ' ' x 

Such doctrines could not have been uttered in any other 
great country in the twentieth century by responsible leaders 
of public opinion. But for the two decades preceding 
Armageddon they were being hammered into the German 
mind until they became a part of the national gospel. In 1911 
appeared a remarkable book, "Germany and the Next War," 
by Lieutenant-General Friedrich von Bernhardi. It did not 
differ materially in philosophy and program from a num- 

i It was freely argued that the British empire having reached such 
a size, Britain owed a certain "compensation" to Germany if she was to 
be a decent neighbor. Either England should give part of her empire 
up to Germany or she should at least let the latter take what she re- 
quired of the colonies of France, Portugal, Belgium and Holland. In 
June, 1913, Rohrbach (too moderate for most Pan-Germans), wrote 
bluntly, "Germany could not content herself with the r6le of registering 
increases of England's power, and must take up the very self-evident 
position that the principle of compensation should be given a certain 
retroactive force." 



364 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ber of other books which enjoyed equal or greater popularity 
in the author's own country, but the excellence of its literary 
workmanship and the high military rank of its writer, caused 
it to receive serious attention abroad. Almost the instant the 
war began in 1914, it became so apparent that the German 
general staff was putting into effect almost all the proposi- 
tions advanced by Bernhardi, that the author was accepted 
throughout the world as having been permitted to utter in- 
spired prophecy — to express the aspirations, purposes and 
high policy of the men who had come to control the govern- 
ment of William II; 1 and Bernhardi 's doctrines and their 
prompt fulfillment showed clearly enough that the Pan-Ger- 
mans were driving the Prussian war-chariot. 

Bernhardi 's main proposition and deductions were these: 
The future was full of perils for Germany, other nations 
hated her, yet her people failed to realize their danger be- 
cause of their unfortunate love of peace. The true fortune 
of the nation, however, was not to be made by peace but by 
war. ''War is the father of all things," to quote a Greek 
philosopher, and among nations "right is respected so far 
only as it is compatible with advantage." War itself is a 
blessing when properly used and understood : and since grow- 
ing nations need more territory, this must "as a rule be 
obtained at the cost of its possessors — that is to say, by con- 
quest, which thus becomes a law of necessity." Again, His 
Excellency, the author, observes that "Might is at once the 
supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is decided 
by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just 
decision: since its decisions rest on the very nature of 
things. ' ' 

Arguments for peace are usually based on sordid self-in- 
terest: e.g., the United States has urged arbitration, etc., 
"in order to be able to devote its undisturbed attention to 
money-making and the enjoyment of wealth, and to save the 

i Bernhardi did not indeed claim to speak with official authority: he 
was on the retired list of the army. But Prussian lieutenant-generals 
were not ordinarily expected to utter sentiments on ticklish subjects un- 
welcome to the "All-Highest." 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 365 

three hundred million dollars which it spends on its army and 
navy." This is a grievous mistake for America, not merely 
because of the risk she runs from England or Japan, but be- 
cause she "avoids the stress of great political emotions 
[stirred by a war] without which the moral development of 
the national character is impossible." (pp. 28-29.) 

The Christian precept of love clearly does not apply to the 
affairs of nations. Christian morality is merely personal. 
Jesus himself said, "I came not to send peace on earth, but 
a sword." If we understand Christianity properly, "we can- 
not disapprove of war in itself, but must admit that it is 
justified morally and historically. ' ' 1 

Arbitration treaties "must be peculiarly detrimental to 
an aspiring people which has not yet reached its political and 
national zenith, and is bent on expanding its power in order 
to play its part honorably in the civilized world"; and 
Bethmann-Hollweg was entirely right when in a speech in the 
Reichstag (March 30, 1911) he declared them to be prac- 
tically useless. Various Americans, like Elihu Root, seemed 
enamored with them, but that was because they imagined 
"public opinion must represent the view which American 
plutocrats think most useful to themselves. ' ' Of course many 
of the most profitable annexations of Prussia, e.g., Silesia, 
seized by Frederick the Creat, would never have come by arbi- 
tration, and if they had so come it would have been without 
the vast moral gain which accrued to Prussia by winning 
them in war. Besides, courts of arbitration would have to 
treat all nations alike, and it is outrageous to establish that 
"a weak nation is to have in short the same right to live as 
a powerful and vigorous nation." "Our [German] people 
must learn to see that the maintenance of peace never can or 
may oe the goal of a [national] policy." (Italics Bernhardi's 
own.) "The inevitablness, the idealism and the blessedness 
of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of develop- 
ment, must be repeatedly emphasized." 

War therefore is often a most desirable, as well as righteous 

i The context clearly shows Bernhardi here means offensive wars, not 
defensive merely. 



366 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and holy thing. Often also it is the duty to make it, even if 
it can be honorably avoided. Frederick the Great set an 
admirable example: "None of his wars were forced upon 
him; none of them did he postpone as long as possible. He 
had always determined to be the aggressor, to anticipate his 
opponents, and to secure for himself favorable prospects of 
success." x 

Treitschke was very right, thinks Bernhardi, when he said 
that the morality of the state must be judged by the nature 
of the state and not of the individual citizen; and again 
when he said that "among all political sins the sin of feeble- 
ness is the most contemptible: — it is the political sin against 
the Holy Ghost!" 

Germany must recognize that she has long been weak and 
oppressed; that she is now powerful and must for the sake 
of the rest of the world expand still further. "To no nation 
except the German has it been given to enjoy in its inner 
self 'that which has been given to mankind as a whole.' " 
Other peoples may have special talents but none others have 
"the capacity for generalization and absorption. It is this 
quality which especially fits us for leadership in the intel- 
lectual world and imposes on us the obligation to maintain 
that position." Furthermore, a great many real Germans 
unfortunately are not yet in the empire. The mouths of the 
"German Rhine lie in non-German lands"; also "the over- 
flow of the strength of the German nation has poured into 
foreign countries." "Obviously this is not a condition which 
can satisfy a powerful nation, or which corresponds to the 
greatness of the German nation and its intellectual impor- 
tance." "All that which other nations attained in centuries 
of national development — political union, colonial possessions, 
naval power, international trade — were denied to our nation 
until quite recently. What we now wish to attain must be 
fought for [Bernhardi 's italics] and won against a superior 
force of hostile interests and powers." 

iThis was written in 1911. In 1914 the German war council evi- 
dently felt required to act fully on this interpretation of the Fredrician 
precedents. 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 367 

The most famous of Bernhardi's chapters was his fifth, 
bearing the significant title "World Power or Downfall." 
He argues that the time has come when Germany must gain 
world empire by one great stroke or fall ruinously in the at- 
tempt. It will not be enough to stand simply ready to ward 
off attack. That is the bane of the old Triple Alliance: "it 
offers a certain security against hostile aggression, but does 
not consider the necessary development of events, and does 
not guarantee to any of its members help in the prosecution 
of essential interests. ' ' Germany must try to make it worth 
while for Austria and Italy x to support her by herself push- 
ing their pet projects, but of course German interests must 
come first. Russia, France and England can never fail to be 
obstacles in the Fatherland's way. With them there can be 
no real peace; only an armistice. It is true Russia may be 
kept quiet for a while because "her present political attitude 
depends considerably on the person of the present emperor 
[Nicholas II], who believes in the need of leaning upon a 
strong monarchical state, such as Germany is, and also upon 
the character of the internal development of the mighty 
empire"; although of course the "revolutionary and moral 
infection" which has tainted Russia may produce a change 
in her policy which can upset all calculations. "But in any 
case we shall always find her on the side of those who try 
to cross our political paths." 

English policy also can never permit true friendship for 
Germany. English leaders "committed the unpardonable 
blunder, from their point of view" of not supporting the 
Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War, and so 
crippling Britain's great transatlantic rival. Germany can 
possibly hope for a war between America and England, but 
as things are, it is unsafe to count definitely upon it, al- 
though friction over Canadian issues may easily "strain rela- 
tions to a dangerous point. ' ' England realizes, however, that 
Canada, South Africa and Australia are none too loyal; also 
that Moslem India may revolt. With these facts in view Eng- 

i Bernhardi expresses Platonic hopes that Italy will stand by the 
Teutonic powers, but makes it plain that he does not really count on her. 



368 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

land must not allow Germany to wax too strong. "If Eng- 
land is forced to fight America, the German fleet must not be 
in a position to help the Americans. Therefore it must be 
destroyed." "All facts considered, a pacific agreement with 
England is, after all, a will-o'-the-wisp which no serious 
German statesman would trouble to follow." As for pro- 
tests of certain "English politicians, publicists and Utopians," 
they "cannot alter the real basis of affairs." 

Of one other thing Bernhardi was very sure. "In one 
way or another we must square our account with France 
[his italics], if we wish for a free hand in our international 
policy. . . . France must be so crushed that she can never 
again come across our path. ' ' * 

As for treaties, questions of neutrality and international 
compacts, "it is essential that we do not allow ourselves to 
be cramped in our freedom of action by considerations, de- 
void of any inherent political necessity, which depend only 
on political expediency, and are not binding on us." "No 
man," to quote Frederick the Great, "if he has a grain of 
sense, will give his enemies leisure to make all prepara- 

i Bernhardi here evidently means that because France cannot forget 
Alsace-Lorraine, and submit herself as a convenient tool of German 
ambition, she must therefore be crushed so utterly that she can never 
cross the Teutons' path again. — "The injured can forgive a wrong; the 
injurer never." 

The practical annihilation of France was a fixed part of the Pan- 
Germanic programme, partly because the ruin of France would be a 
great step to the ruin of England. The failure of Bismarck to take 
much greater territories in 1871, as well as to "bleed France white" 
by a simply crushing war-indemnity was deplored at many Pan-Ger- 
manic conferences. In 1911 Herr Class, President of the Pan-German 
League, wrote openly advocating the annexation of all Northern France 
from Nancy to the mouth of the Somme so that Germany could possess 
Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk as a means to getting at England. 
David Fryman, a kindred spirit, wrote, "The victorious German nation 
will be able to insist that an end shall be put once for all to the threats 
of France. Therefore France must be crushed. We shall also insist 
upon the cession of so much French territory as will ensure our security 
for evermore. Such territory will have to be evacuated by its inhabi- 
tants. Then we shall take whichever of the French colonies will best 
suit Germany's requirements." 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 369 

tions in order to destroy him ; he will rather take advantage 
of his start to put himself in a favorable position." And 
the good general pauses at this point somewhat significantly 
to consider whether, by acquiring the Congo State, Belgium 
had not destroyed her status of neutrality, saying that in 
any case "the conception of permanent neutrality is en- 
tirely contrary to the essential nature of the state." "No 
one stands above the state ; it is sovereign, and must itself 
decide whether the internal conditions of another state menace 
its own existence or interests." 

Bernhardi's final gospel may be said to be summed up in 
two significant paragraphs. "No people is so little qualified 
as the German to direct its own destinies, whether in a parlia- 
mentary or republican constitution; to no people is the cus- 
tomary liberal pattern so inappropriate as to us." Therefore 
the country requires "the leadership of powerful personali- 
ties" who can "force conflicting aspirations into concentra- 
tion and union" and to win world empire the German nation 
must sacrifice not merely lives and property but "private 
views and preferences, in the interests of the common wel- 
fare." 

This must be done, for the stake in the impending war 
will be tremendous: "We have fought the last great wars 
for our national union among the powers of Europe; we 
must now decide whether we wish to develop into and main- 
tain a World-E?npire" — Bernhardi's italics — "and procure 
for the German spirit and German ideas that fit recognition 
which has hitherto been withheld from them." 

The remainder of this book was taken up with an acute 
analysis of the military reforms needful in Germany to make 
this victory sure — reforms almost completely accomplished 
between 1911 and 1914. 1 

i In discussing the European armies Bernhardi rates the "tactical 
value" of the French troops as "very high," but thinks "the French 
army lacks the subordination under a single commander, the united 
spirit which characterizes the German army, the tenacious spirit of the 
German race and the esprit de corps of the officers." 

England he thinks will never enter heartily into anything but a naval 
war. Her generals are probably poor, and her army small. In any 



370 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

In 1914 practically everything (so far as it lay in the con- 
trol of the German General Staff) came true even as Bern- 
hardi predicted. His book therefore enjoys an almost unique 
value as being the interpretation of a great state policy and 
an accurate prediction of the things which were to be. Bern- 
hardi, however, was only one among the many influential 
Pan-Germanist prophets. After the outbreak of the great 
war Teutonic apologists denied that his book had had in- 
fluence or circulation. This is in no wise the case. It had 
gone through six editions within sixteen months after pub- 
lication. Enthusiastic reviews commended it as "engaging 
the serious attention of our own political — and it need hardly 
be added, military circles," and deplored the fact that its 
high price prevented a still wider distribution. To very 
many thoughtful Germans of the dominant classes it seemed 
a welcome declaration of the nation's hopes and policy. It 
was mentioned for praise or blame in Reichstag debates and 
the newspapers. Outside of Germany it surely increased the 
distrust in which the Fatherland was being held; but no 
Frenchman, Englishman, or American could discover its true 
importance until the beginning of Armageddon. 

It is a fact, nevertheless, that by himself Bernhardi would 
have been only a voice in the wilderness. He only contributed 
the most readable, pungent and logical book of the whole great 
Pan-Germanist literature. Other books were cheaper and 
had probably equal influence and greater direct popularity. 
Their burden was always the same: — the superiority and 
holy mission of the Teutons; the need for expansion terri- 
torially both in Europe and across the seas ; the blessedness of 
war; the inevitability of a great struggle with France, Eng- 
land and Russia, with America in the background; and the 
certainty of being able by one great heroic stroke to achieve 
world-empire. 

Almost simultaneously with Bernhardi another writer, 
Tannenberg, stated the problem even more bluntly than he. 

case, "it is very questionable whether the English army is capable of 
effectively acting on the offensive against continental European troops." 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 371 

''Our fathers have left us much to do. The German people 
is so situated in Europe that it needs only to run and take 
whatever it requires. . . . Today it is for Germany to rise 
from the position of a [merely] European to that of a world 
power. The German nation holds a position among European 
powers which permits it to reach its goal by a single rapid 
rush. . . . Public policy prompted by the emotions is stupid- 
ity. Humanitarian dreams are imbecility. Diplomatic char- 
ity begins at home. Statesmanship is business. Right and 
wrong are notions indispensable only in private life. The 
German people are always right because they number 87,000,- 
000 souls. Our fathers have left us much to do. " 1 

While this philosophy was mastering the souls of a great 
civilized people, what was the attitude of their rulers — the 
princes who were clinging to their " God-sent" political 
power, and the ministers who were the agents of these princes ? 
The ministers were indeed speaking frequently of "peace"! 
for had they spoken otherwise and openly endorsed the Pan- 
German program the much belauded war would have blazed 
forth spontaneously, 2 but they were using none of those round 
measures of repression for an unwelcome propaganda to which 
the Social Democrats were well accustomed; and they were 
faithfully delivering their annual sermons in the Reichstag, 
as to how the nation was ringed around with jealous enemies 
and must therefore increase her mighty army and build a 
correspondingly mighty fleet. 

The heir to the throne, the Crown Prince Frederick William, 
was openly consorting with the extreme militarist, pro-war 

i "Gross-Deutschland," pp. 230-231, Tannenberg is probably a 
pseudonym, possibly for some exalted personage. 

2 The extreme bluntness of the Pan-German doctrines was of course 
disconcerting to the ministers who hoped to keep the peace at least 
until the proper time for "The Day" was at hand. A former French 
ambassador to Berlin wrote, in 1907, that it was lucky Germany was 
not a democratic country, otherwise public pressure would have already 
rushed it into war. The Kaiser's government had to restrain constant 
expressions of "disgust and anger" against foreign powers. "Anything 
the government would do to bother France or England is sure to be 
applauded by the people." 



372 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

party, applauding violent jingoist speeches in the Reichstag, 
and evidently going to the extreme limit permissible with- 
out provoking extreme foreign disquietude. In 1913 he wrote 
an introduction to a volume, ' ' Germany in Arms, ' ' in which he 
said, "It is only by relying upon our good German sword that 
we can hope to conquer that place in the sun which rightly be- 
longs to us, and which the world does not seem willing to 
accord us. . . . Till the world shall come to an end, the 
ultimate decision must rest with the sword. ' ' 

The emperor, his august father, could not indeed use quite 
such unveiled language. His position forbade him to an- 
nounce a program of conquest until he was actually ready to 
draw the sword. Probably in his professions of love of peace 
he was not consciously hypocritical: but was not the peace 
he claimed to desire a peace in which no rash power should 
oppose "the legitimate aspirations of Germany"? The 
kaiser's speeches abounded in talk of "sharpening the sword," 
of wearing "shining armor," of the brave military deeds of 
his "glorified ancestors," and of the need of being ready for 
an instant summons to arms. We shall see how he built a 
great navy, useless for defense against France and Russia, 
and directly provocative of Germany's old neighbor and 
comrade-in-arms, England. What precise things were always 
stirring in the mind of this brilliant, aggressive, irresponsible 
and wholly erratic man who may wisely say? 

Yet at times William II almost lifted the veil over his in- 
most projects and ambitions. In 1900 he used a phrase 
whereof the world might well have taken anxious notice. "I 
hope to Germany it will be granted ... to become in the 
future as closely united, as powerful, and as authoritative as 
was once the Roman empire, and that just as in the olden 
times they said, 'I am a Roman citizen' (Civis Bomanus sum), 
hereafter, at some time in the future, they will say, 'I am a 
German citizen ! ' ' ' 1 

Here then was the vision — the dream of world-empire which 

i Speech at the opening of a museum of Roman Antiquities, at the 
Saalburg, October 11, 1900. The Emperor was of course speaking in- 



THE PAN-GERMANIC DREAM 373 

had lured the hosts of Xerxes, Alexander, Julius Caesar and 
Napoleon on the greatest of human adventures. 

formally. He would hardly have dared to use such words in a formal 
state document on account of foreign complications. 

A few years later at Bremen, he said, "God has called us to civilize 
the world: we are the missionaries of human progress." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE GROWING ENMITY OF BRITAIN AND GERMANY 

IN the opening years of the twentieth century one great 
fact stood out in ever-blackening relief to every student of 
international affairs and lover of his fellow men — the grow- 
ing enmity of Britain and Germany. Much energy was ex- 
pended in denying it. The mere fact that such energy 
seemed called for proved that the hatred existed. It is 
possible to argue away a concrete incident ; it is impossible to 
argue away a great mass of national ill-feeling. This was 
what made the whole situation so hopeless. Xo arbitration 
tribunal, no majestic peace conference, could ordain that 
Britons and Teutons should love one another and then see 
to it that its mandate was obeyed. Shortly before 1914 an 
American familiar with Germany declared that the great 
majority of the kaiser's subjects undoubtedly "dreaded the 
Russians, 1 despised the French,, but hated the English." 
He was quite justified in his statement. 

In fairness it should be added that English dislike of 
Germany was also extreme. Books, plays and newspapers 
taught King George's subjects that between Prussianized 
Saxon and Anglo-Saxon there was little more than an armed 

i There is little doubt that the Germans lived in genuine dread of 
the great mass of Slavs stretching from their eastern border to the 
Pacific. "We can never defeat Russia," they would say, meaning that no 
momentary military victories would ever turn back the great Russian 
peril. The Germans undoubtedlv over-estimated the ability of the Rus- 
sians to translate their great potential resources into actual military 
action. The fears of a Russian invasion were probably stimulated by 
the Prussian militarists to get political and financial favors for the 
army, and the dread of being overrun by "Slavic hordes" went far to 
reconcile the peace-lovers in Germany in 1914 to the need of a "war for 
defence." 

374 



THE GROWING ENMITY 375 

truce possible, and that it was high time for Britons to drop 
their old grudges against Frenchmen and Russians and rec- 
ognize their true enemy. On both sides of the North Sea, 
therefore, there existed a body of public opinion ready for any 
spark in the magazine of international combustibles. How 
had this most sorrowful situation come about? 

The two nations had many points of superficial similarity. 
Both used a Teutonic language. In both the majority of the 
population were Protestants, not Catholics. In both there 
was a certain seriousness, if not heaviness, of the national 
temper not found in the Latinized South. The royal houses 
of England and Germany were closely interrelated. History 
linked Englishmen and Germans as brothers-in-arms on many 
honorable battlefields: and Blucher and Wellington had 
shared jointly in the glories of Waterloo. 1 The two nations 
had never been opposed in any very serious war. They car- 
ried on a thriving commerce one with another. There had 
been a constant influx of British students to Berlin, and of 
waiters, commercial travellers and more pretentious merchants 
from Germany to London. The policy of Bismarck had al- 
ways been to stand well with the great island empire. "Eng- 
land is more important to us than Zanzibar and the whole 
East African coast," he had exclaimed angrily to a delega- 
tion when urged to get into a quarrel over some wretched 
tropical colonies. The British on their part were grateful 
for the good turn the chancellor had done them at the Berlin 
Congress. In short, down to 1900, or thereabouts, the rela- 
tions of the two powers seemed excellent because, as Bis- 
marck at another time had said: "As regards England we 
are in the happy situation of having no conflict of interests, 
except commercial rivalry and [mere] passing differences 
. . . but there is nothing that can bring about a war between 
two pacific and hardworking nations/' And yet in 1914 this 
war had been brought about. Which power had changed — 
England or Germany? 

1 It may be added that disputes as to which army, British or Prus- 
sian, really did the most to win that battle, contributed not a little to 
the international hard-feeling. 



376 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

In the earlier stages of the great European conflict it was 
usual to allege that "at bottom this is merely a war of com- 
mercial interests." Such a statement is folly. It is per- 
fectly true that there was grievous commercial competition. 
Before the rise of the new German empire, England had 
been the workshop of the world, exporting incomparably a 
greater quantity of manufactured articles than any other na- 
tion. Her nearest rival, France, had, in a former generation, 
only maintained a certain preeminence in the elegant articles 
of fashion and luxury: silks, toilet articles, furnishings for 
the parlor, the wardrobe and the boudoir, choice wines and 
champagnes, etc. Such French competition never sent real 
fear down the spines of Birmingham and Manchester. It is 
true, on the other hand, that the intrusion of the products 
of German industry, whether woollen-goods, pianos, pocket 
knives or artillery, supported as these products were by an 
admirable commercial system which studied the foreign 
markets and gave long credit, often produced anger and con- 
sternation in many a British factory. "Made in Germany " 
was undoubtedly the text for many unscriptural anathemas. 
Nevertheless, it assuredly took more than counting-room fury 
to make Briton and German fly at one another's throats. 
Certainly German commercial prosperity was increasing by 
such leaps and bounds that Teutons had no right to grudge 
their English cousins their trade. On the other hand, in the 
decade before the outbreak of the great war, British commerce 
was by no means so decadent as to justify gloomy prognos- 
tications and a resort to desperate remedies to check competi- 
tion. Both nations were genuinely prosperous, and it was 
becoming very evident that the world contained ample op- 
portunities alike for Sheffield and for Essen, for Leeds and 
for Leipzig. 1 

i The evidence to show that England was not commercially decadent 
is admirably assembled in Schmidt, "England and Germany," pp. Ill— 
115. As he wisely observes, "If sheer profit had been the only consid- 
eration, England would never have risked her very existence in a 
struggle which must cost infinitely more than the sum total of Ger- 
many's foreign trade for many, many years." 



THE GROWING ENMITY 377 

There is better proof, however, that England and Germany 
did not fall out merely over commercial issues. They were 
not the only super-great trading and industrial nations of 
the world. There was also the United States. 

America did not indeed possess the merchant marine which 
Germany was developing. A large percentage of our prod- 
ucts were natural and not manufactured. Nevertheless, by 
1914 American commercial competition was pressing the two 
European leaders hard in almost every market of the word. 
Trade rivalry sometimes produced for us real international 
friction. It accounted for many of the flashes of unfriendli- 
ness which occasionally flared up between the United States 
and Britain. It was hard for Americans quite to forgive 
England for the way she had let our merchant marine be 
ruined at the time of our Civil War. "The lion's tail" was 
often "twisted" by blustering speeches in Congress, provoked 
by questions of free trade, protection, fishery rights, etc. 
Nevertheless, despite this extremely keen competition, despite 
these exchanges of very unamiable candor, the relations of 
the United States and Britain were growing steadily better, 
ever since the so-called "Venezuela incident" of 1896, which 
had ended in the virtual acceptance by England of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. In 1914 a war between America and Britain 
had become almost impossible, 1 despite a commercial rivalry 
which threatened to become more acute as the United States 
reformed her financial policy and developed her enormous 
resources. 

Englishmen and Americans were thus becoming simultane- 
ously commercial rivals, and friends at the same time. Eng- 
lishmen and Germans were becoming commercial rivals and 
increasingly bitter enemies. What was the reason for this? 

i Germans persistently imagined that Americans had retained all 
their old feuds with Great Britain. In Germany the writer has been 
repeatedly assured, "The English are of course your natural enemies." 
There is much reason to believe that part of the Pan-German propa- 
ganda included a systematic fostering in the United States of the 
ancient prejudices against all things British. In 1914 transatlantic 
sympathy with England was, to many Germans at least, a great sur- 
prise as well as a corresponding disappointment. 



378 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The answer briefly is that the Germans were becoming very 
much more than commercial rivals. 

Long before Britons, in their insular pride and self-con- 
centration, began to realize that they were cordially hated 
from the Rhine to the Memel, their race and its representa- 
tives had become generally unpopular everywhere save along 
the familiar lines of tourist travel. Doubtless the lordly con- 
descension and brusque manners of English travellers were 
no more enjoyed in Saxony than in France or Italy. But 
Englishmen were not unpopular merely because they had 
blunt manners and failed to take off their hats when they 
entered a shop. The low opinion of Britain entertained by 
Treitschke has already been noted (p. 349). The famous lec- 
turer was not alone in his opinion. Bismarck himself, despite 
his studious official cordiality for England, privately used to 
express an ardent detestation of many things British. His 
relations with the Empress Victoria (wife of Frederick II 
and mother of William II) were very bad, and he is alleged to 
have arranged the marriage of the future William II with a 
Holstein princess not simply to propitiate a princely dynasty 
which the Hohenzollerns were claimed to have ousted from 
their duchy, but also, as the chancellor is said to have put it, 
"to get less of that cursed English blood" in the next gen- 
eration of the imperial house. 

In truth, even in the upper classes, between the British aris- 
tocracy with their magnificent country estates, their refined 
Oxford education, their careers as civilian administrators and 
governors-general of great colonies, or their cabinet ministries 
under a strictly constitutional government, and the Prussian 
junkers with their ancient schlosses, cubbish breeding in mili- 
tary schools, followed by barrack-room life or unexciting exist- 
ence in the grubbing routine of provincial civil offices there 
could not be a great deal in common. The English aristocrats 
had long since emerged from the squirarchy stage : very many 
of the junkers were still in it. As touching the rest of the 
British nation, the great democratic element, the liberals who 
held bishops and dukes at bay, the mighty parties which had 
reduced the king to a personified social function and which 



THE GROWING ENMITY 379 

ever constantly whittled down the power of the lords — all 
these of course seemed distressing in the eyes of the Bis- 
marckians. It was impossible to understand a land where 
army officers were forbidden to fight duels and had to go to 
law, where base-born men frequently ejected noblemen of 
pedigree from public power by means of the ballot box, and 
above all, where the army was small, generally distrusted, 
and not allowed the slightest political influence. 1 All this 
was true before the two countries began to have any official 
quarrels. 

Englishmen vaguely felt that Germans disliked them, but 
in the nineties they treated this possibility with their char- 
acteristic disdain. The interests of the great land and the 
great sea empires seemed to clash at few points. In 1890 
Britain actually ceded to Germany Helgoland, in return 
indeed for concessions in East Africa, but it was an island, 
which, minute though it seemed, formed a veritable pistol in 
the North Sea pointed at Hamburg and Bremen. That by 
ceding this small isle, British statesmen were actually strik- 
ing a blow at their own naval safety was the last thing that 
then crossed the mind of Lord Salisbury and his astute fellow 
ministers. It may in fairness, however, be stated that this 
ill-feeling of the Prussian junker class for England was no 
menace to the world's happiness until it came into sinister 
combination with the darling policies and ambitions of Wil- 
liam II. 

The young kaiser from the outset spoke much of peace ; he 
was a frequent visitor at the court of his grandmother, the 
puissant old lady of Windsor; he professed (probably not in- 
sincerely) a keen admiration for many things British, but he 
also, from the outset of his reign, manifested a tendency to 
make innovations in German policy which spelled collision 
with England if pushed beyond a certain point. By a long 

i German military men even objected that British (and American) 
army officers did not have the true military spirit and were "hope- 
lessly subject to the cowardly civilian power" because unlike German 
officers, who wore their uniforms on all occasions, British officers, in 
peace times, frequently wore civilian clothes when off duty. 



380 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

series of acts and speeches he also played into the hands of 
the great elements among his subjects who were coming to 
teach that war was a blessing, and that war with England 
was most blessed of all. 

Kaiser Wilhelm took pride not merely in being the head of 
the Prussian war-machine. He speedily indicated his ambi- 
tion to be the head of an extremely formidable naval ma- 
chine also. Germany, or the parts thereof, formerly had 
never made boasts upon the high seas. In 1870 the French 
had blockaded North German ports and done considerable 
damage to their commerce. When the new emperor took 
power he found that he possessed a naval establishment of a 
few efficient cruisers, a few iron-clads of the coast defence 
type and a fairly large torpedo flotilla — enough to make 
blockading perilous, hardly more. In 1889 the German navy 
had been so weak for offensive purposes that Bismarck had 
been fain to come to an understanding with the United States 
over the possession of the Samoa Islands, despite the fact 
that the issue had been serious, and that the American navy 
then barely reckoned a small squadron of modern steel vessels. 
William's ambitions made this situation seem intolerable. 
"Our future is upon the sea," he announced in a famous 
prophecy. 

In 1896 the kaiser sent a telegram to President Kriiger of 
the Boer Republic of the Transvaal congratulating him on 
having repelled a raid of English filibusterers. For a variety 
of reasons this message was peculiarly obnoxious to the Eng- 
lish people, especially as the Transvaal was supposed to have 
all its foreign relations pretty strictly through Britain, and 
the Emperor had expressed his glee that Kriiger had avoided 
his danger "without appealing to the help of friendly pow- 
ers. ' ' This seemed to imply that Germany was ready in case 
of need to stand behind the Transvaal against England. The 
latter answered by mobilizing a "flying squadron" of battle- 
ships and cruisers so superior to anything William could send 
to Africa that the helplessness of the kaiser to make good his 
bold suggestion became absurd. 

In 1898 occurred the Spanish- American War, and the 



THE GROWING ENMITY 381 

Dewey-Diedrichs incident at Manila. The rising Pan-Ger- 
man party saw the democratic Yankee republic carrying on 3 
a whole string of tropical islands (the very thing good Teu- 
tons lusted after) before their very eyes. Their first jealousy 
was aimed at America : had the German fleet been only a little 
stronger how many interesting things might have happened! 
But it was clear that England regarded American success with 
profound complacency. She had given us very effective help 
at Manila. The wrath of the Pan-Germans was directed 
against England too. 

In 1899 the Boer "War was begun in Africa. Germans as a 
nation sympathized intensely with the Dutch farmers strug- 
gling against a mighty empire. It was not merely natural 
partiality for the under-dog. In crushing the Boers the 
British were putting an end to a dream very many Germans 
had half consciously cherished of a South Africa that should 
be controlled or at least "protected" by the Hohenzollern 
eagle. Nowhere in Europe was England popular, but in 
Germany least of all. If the Emperor had been willing to 
make the least official move to support the Boers he would 
have had enthusiastic popular support. The German press 
exaggerated every British defeat. It was gravely stated that 
the English regiments regularly ran at the first volley or sur- 
rendered in droves. 1 The failure of the British generals to 
cope with perplexing questions of guerilla warfare was hailed 
as proof positive that here was a doomed and degenerate 
nation. Grossly vile caricatures of Queen Victoria had an 
abundant sale in all the little "post-card" shops wherein the 
Fatherland abounded: 2 and no story of British misconduct 
or inhumanity was too improbable to be believed. In sjiort, 
the Boer War for the first time taught the British that they 

i The writer was repeatedly assured of this fact, by very intelligent 
persons, while he was in Germany during the Boer War. 

2 I have had many of these coarse "souvenir cards" thrust upon me 
on the supposition that as an American I must needs enjoy every fling 
at Britain. — It is worth observing that the very worst atrocities 
charged by the German press against the British in 1899-1902 did not 
constitute one tithe of the outrages committed undoubtedly by the Ger- 
man troops in Belgium and France in 1914 and subsequently. 



382 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

were very unpopular on the continent, but that they were 
most unpopular of all in Germany. 

Nevertheless, while the newspapers and public meetings 
raged, the Emperor and the responsible statesmen kept their 
heads. British regiments might run away — possibly? — but 
nothing at least had happened to show that the British navy 
was not as terrible as ever. "William II preserved a studiously 
correct attitude towards England until the Boers had sur- 
rendered (1902). He used the situation, however, to preach 
a very plain sermon to his subjects: he must have a greatly 
enlarged fleet. 

Already in 1898 the Reichstag had been induced to vote a 
considerable naval program. Now the emperor and his very 
efficient and adroit High-Admiral Von Tirpitz came forward 
with a very much more elaborate proposition. William II 
struck when the iron was hot, when the Pan-German element 
was smarting under the sense of impotence at seeing first the 
Spanish-American and then the Boer wars being fought to a 
finish, and they utterly unable to get into the game. In 1897 
the emperor had really disclosed his program by saying: 
"The trident of Neptune must be in our hands." In 1899 he 
spoke out more fiercely, "We are in bitter need of a strong 
German navy. If the increases demanded early in my reign 
had not been refused in spite of my warnings and my con- 
tinued entreaties, how differently should we be able to further 
our flourishing commerce and our interests overseas." What 
interests of Germany had suffered save that she had not been 
able to bear help to Spain and the Boers is hard to say: but 
the emperor certainly knew how to work on the purse-strings 
of his subjects. In 1900 a great naval program was laid 
before the Reichstag. 

Germany's need of a mighty navy was not solely based on 
the idea of reckoning with England. Von Billow, as imperial 
spokesman, stated the case concisely late in 1899. Two of the 
three instances which he cited as proving the necessity of a 
powerful fleet are of more interest to Americans than to 
Britons. He said a need of naval increase was urgent because 
"first the Spanish-American War, then the disturbance in 



THE GROWING ENMITY 383 

Samoa, 1 and then the war in South Africa put our overseas 
interests at such different points in serious embarrassment: 
and fate proved it [this requirement of a strong navy] before 
our eyes." . . . "You will understand, gentlemen, that in my 
official position I cannot say much, and that I cannot dot all 
my i's." It is quite likely, then, that if at the close of the 
nineteenth century Germany had possessed a powerful fleet, 
America and not England might have first tested Teutonic 
naval valor. Nevertheless, the main uses of a great fleet 
would have been against England. The nation that could 
cripple Britain upon her chosen element could obviously give 
the law to any lesser maritime power. 2 In submitting the 1900 
naval program, Von Tirpitz therefore announced frankly, 
' 'Germany must have a battle-fleet so strong that with the 
greatest of the sea powers for adversary, a war against it 
would involve such dangers as would imperil his own position 
in the world." 

Von Tirpitz and his associates did not indeed propose to 
build a navy of the same nominal strength as that of Britain. 
They believed that the latter could never be able to concen- 
trate her whole armada in home-waters for defence against an 
attack across the North Sea ; or, if she did so, her great outly- 
ing interests would probably go to ruin. They also argued 
that by superior training and discipline a smaller number of 
ships (German) could defeat a greater number (English), 

i In 1898-99 there had been renewed friction in Samoa, which had 
ended in the partition of those islands between Germany and the 
United States. 

2 Without entirely endorsing the statement that the British fleet has 
been for recent years the sole genuine protection of the United States 
against Germany, it seems fair to point out that Germans clearly real- 
ized that any attack upon America, until the absolute neutrality or 
helplessness of Britain had been assured, would be extremely hazardous. 
In any case Britain would gain commercially and economically while 
German energies were preempted by the Trans-Atlantic struggle, and 
at the end the English might step in with overwhelming naval might and 
rob the Germans of the fruits of any victory. "In a war at present 
between Germany and the United States the victor may be England!" 
is the way I have heard the case stated. 

It was therefore necessary to pull down English sea-power first, after 
which America could be handled according to the pleasure of Berlin. 



384 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

likewise that ' ' careful preparation permitting rapid mobiliza- 
tion can ensure a momentary superiority. ' ' 1 

Faced with these arguments the Reichstag in 1900 passed a 
new law providing for the gradual increase of the fleet until, 
in 1920, it should contain 38 battleships, 14 large cruisers, 38 
light cruisers and appropriate small craft. This was a long 
time in which to create a great navy and Britain was not 
seriously alarmed. Prussian policy however often knew how 
to speed up authorized programs and the German fleet was not 
destined to grow at this very moderate pace. It was still a 
difficult matter, however, for the government to get money for 
ships. As a class the junker leaders were landsmen. Their 
joy was in the army wherein their sons held commissions, and 
Germany was still a sufficiently poor country to make it seem 
very hard to keep up a great army and a great navy simultane- 
ously. The Kaiser and Von Tirpitz however were tempo- 
rarily satisfied. The entering wedge had been driven. 

On January 22nd, 1901, died the mighty Queen Victoria. 
Not quite sixty-four years had reigned this good as well as 
great sovereign. Her direct political influence in England 
had not seemed very large: her indirect social influence in 
every monarchy of Europe had been tremendous. Kings and 
emperors had recognized her moral priority and her right 
to lecture them privately in behalf of peace and of fair inter- 
national dealing. Even the Hohenzollern had stood in re- 
spectful awe of her. But now in her place reigned her son 
Edward VII. The relations of the new monarch and William 
II, his nephew, were not cordial. The later reasons alleged 
for their coldness were various, but coldness undoubtedly 
there was. 2 Great monarchies do not go to war today merely 

i Statement on Naval Strategy, published at this time by Admiral 
von der Goltz, former chief of staff of the German navy. 

2 The story as told the writer, by ordinarily well-informed Germans, 
was that while still Prince of Wales, Edward had borrowed money of his 
imperial nephew: after he became king, William asked for a loan in his 
turn but was refused. These tales are mere rumor : it is notorious 
however that Edward had his serious money difficulties, and that the 
Hohenzollern dynasty was — as royal families go — not well provided in 
its private fortune. The present Crown Princess is said to have been 



THE GROWING ENMITY 385 

because their rulers are personally unfriendly, but the public 
peace is not strengthened when two kings mistrust one 
another. Edward VII was sixty years old when he began to 
reign. All his life he had been over-shadowed by his august 
mother. His chief duty for long had been to represent the 
queen at many court ceremonials and public functions, when 
a royal presence and a few smooth, non-committal words were 
in order. People did not take Edward VII very seriously, 
but he had served a long apprenticeship in the school of the 
world. He knew all the capitals of Europe and was on 
especially good terms with the French. The political power 
of an English king, he knew, was slight ; his indirect opportun- 
ities, especially in diplomacy, enormous. Edward was a very 
patriotic Englishman. His father had been a German prince, 
his nephew and many other kinsmen were German rulers: to 
German courts the English royal family had gone for many of 
the wives and husbands of its scions: and Edward himself is 
said to have spoken the tongue of his own subjects with a 
marked Teutonic accent : nevertheless he was (apart, even from 
any disagreement with William II) no great admirer of 
Teutonic traits and tendencies. Much earlier than most 
Englishmen, he seems to have grasped the serious conse- 
quences of the growing spirit of Pan-Germanism — and how it 
was likely to focus all its antipathies and ambitions against 
Britain. He realized too that other nations than Germany, 
notably France and Russia, had disliked England extremely: 
but he considered that their hostility was not so serious and 
could be readily placated. With great skill he devoted him- 
self to this end — to show the non-Teutonic nations whither 
Pan-Germanism and its high-placed sponsors were leading: 
and how there was no advantage anywhere in keeping up the 
old feuds with Britain. 

In 1903 Edward VII began a deliberate cultivation of 
friends for Great Britain. He commenced by visiting Italy, 
with which indeed England had excellent relations, and the 
king whereof (Victor Emmanuel III) had been a very welcome 

an acceptable bride especially because her Mecklenburg family was de- 
cidedly wealthy. 



386 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

visitor while a young prince at the court of Queen Victoria. 1 
It was easy and natural to return from Rome by rail, and to 
be received in Paris by President Loubet. It was only five 
years since the Fashoda incident and the great humiliation of 
France (p. 113), but Parisians were always courteous and 
French statesmen were beginning to discover that if the Pan- 
German scheme menaced the British empire, an indispensable 
preliminary to the scheme involved the crushing of France. 
Edward, therefore, was cordially received in Paris. He wel- 
comed President Loubet to England on a return visit a little 
later. People observed that with the king there usually trav- 
elled an English under-secretary of foreign affairs. This was 
true on other visits to Spain, Portugal, Austria and Russia. 
While the monarchs exchanged congratulations and asked 
after the health of their ''good friend's" or ''brother's" 
families, the practical diplomats were busy with boundary 
questions, "spheres of influence," trade agreements and the 
like. In 1904, the first direct consequence of Edward's policy 
became known: on April 8th, Lord Lansdowne, the British 
foreign minister, and M. Paul Cambon, the French ambassador 
at London, signed a series of conventions that ended prac- 
tically all the outstanding questions between England and 
France. There were of course many other points settled : but 
the main decision was this — France agreed to cease to make 
difficulties about the English occupation of Egypt : and on the 
other hand England was to pull no wry faces if France found 
it needful to stretch her hands over Morocco. Thus was born 
the famous "Entente Cordiale": an informal agreement for 
good fellowship and harmony that should have spelled happi- 
ness for the world. 

The immediate consequences of the entente with France 
were of course to precipitate a crisis with Germany. The 
Morocco question was thrown into European politics by the 
sudden discovery of the Teutonic rulers that here was a ne- 
farious attempt by the despised Gaul and the obstreperous 

i The story is that Queen Victoria, after shrewdly observing the young 
Italian, declared he was the most promising crown prince who had ever 
visited Windsor. 



THE GROWING ENMITY 387 

naval despot to settle an international problem without con- 
sulting Berlin. What followed in the Morocco issue receives 
separate treatment in this book (see chapter XIX). But the 
curious point in question, when once the case had gone beyond 
its first stages, was this — namely, the frantic anxiety of the 
Germans not merely to win their way in Northwest Africa but 
also to drive a wedge between France and England: as if the 
healing of the old feud between those nations could spell only 
disaster for the fatherland. Early in the discussions, it had 
seemed likely enough that the English would give only diplo- 
matic help to Prance in event of a crisis, and it was with a for- 
saken consciousness of this fact in 1905 that France had sac- 
rificed Delcasse, because friendly state letters would never 
have stopped a Teutonic march on Paris (see p. 411). But 
in 1912, in the Agadir crisis, things were different. Germany 
learned well enough then that much water had run through 
the mill, and that if France had to fight she would not fight 
without a mighty naval ally. 

Not to particularize all his travels, Edward VII, working 
informally with the British foreign office, visited from time to 
time all the major powers of Europe, and nowhere — in Ger- 
man opinion — wrought the kaiser's policies any good. Nicho- 
las II of Russia was a weak, pliable man. In 1917 there was 
published a correspondence betwixt the czar and William II 
showing clearly that in 1905 the German kaiser, taking ad- 
vantage of the Czar's anger at English support of Japan, had 
almost induced Nicholas to conclude a secret alliance with him 
against England. France was to be cudgelled into joining 
the combination by her Russian ally. The great powers of 
Europe were thus to be lined up for a deliberate assault on 
the naval empire, which would have to defend herself unaided. 
Denmark was to be seized (as Belgium was in 1914) to pre- 
vent the British fleet from entering the Baltic. This cheer- 
ful scheme, duly thrust upon * 'Nicky" by " Willy," proceeded 
a considerable distance towards maturity, and then for ob- 
scure reasons came suddenly to grief. It may be surmised 
that not merely did an anti-German faction at the Russian 
court get the ear of Nicholas, but that Edward VII, tactful 



388 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and energetic, knew how to throw a counter personal influence 
over the none too resolute czar. This project of William II 
in any case failed ignominiously. Russia was not caught in 
the net of Pan-German intrigue; and what was worse still, 
in 1907 Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign minister (aided 
one cannot tell how much by his astute sovereign) executed 
a masterly counter-stroke. Russia and England in turn 
swore off all their old feuds. Questions of influence in 
Afghanistan and Thibet were cleared up : and chief matter of 
all, Persia, a distracted empire over the " protection" of 
which there had been vast wrangling, was to be divided into 
three spheres of influence; a Russian one in the North, an 
English one in the South, and a neutral zone between. Not 
a single German interest was menaced by this agreement. 
The two signatories did not make any kind of an alliance. 
They only agreed to cease quarreling and to live together in 
harmony, and yet the Berlin newspapers were soon full of 
solemn if not inflammatory editorials: — another case of Ed- 
ward's nefarious policy of "isolating Germany," of "hem- 
ming her in, ' ' and forming a great barrier against her which 
only the sword could cleave away. 

The ill relations between Germany and England became so 
manifest indeed that to prevent too open scandal the king and 
emperor exchanged visits. At least twice in his reign, Ed- 
ward VII rode along Unter den Linden with the outriders of 
his imperial nephew ahead of him, the imperial cuirassiers at 
his side and all the buildings up to the Hohenzollern's schloss 
hung with gala bunting. The visits were outwardly cordial 
and perfectly correct ; presumably good stories were told over 
the emperor's champagne; then the effect of the "reconcilia- 
tions" ended instantly. Everybody knew it. 

Everybody knew, too, that without having a single great 
direct point of quarrel — for the Morocco friction had been 
primarily with Prance — two great empires were getting into 
relations of increasing hatred. In truth England was at last 
becoming seriously alarmed for her safety. German com- 
mercial competition could be met or borne. German threats 



THE GROWING ENMITY 389 

against France, however disturbing, were not a direct menace 
to England. But two things were putting fear into Britons : 
first the increasingly hostile tone of the German press, 
especially that part known to reecho the thoughts of the gov- 
erning class, which preached rancor against England at every 
possible turn : x and secondly the rapid, nay, almost frantic, 
increase of the German fleet. 

Sensible German writers, even ardent advocates of Teu- 
tonic expansion, deplored the irresponsible utterances of their 
journalists : e. g., Rohrbach lectured his countrymen upon the 
bad manners of their press which had ''wrought the greatest 
damage to Anglo-German relations," and suggested that 
Germans had given Englishmen too much reason to believe 
that they "were thinking of attacking England at a favorable 
opportunity and enriching themselves at her expense." But 
assuredly the ill-feeling grew apace. The idea that England 
was a decrepit nation, gripping in some miserly fashion upon 
a maritime power which in justice belonged to the virile Teu- 
tonia — this idea was fostered in literally a myriad ways. In 
1906 a cheap volume in paper covers lay on almost every book- 
stall in the Fatherland. It sold by huge editions. Very pos- 
sibly it was not published without high inspiration. Its title 
was literally "Sea-Storm," and told of how the nations of 
Europe, headed by Germany, attacked Britain and cast her 
from her naval throne. The last chapter gleefully described 
the entrance of Prussian regiments into London, and how the 
United States, taking advantage of the plight of her old 
enemy, annexed Canada and all other British possessions in 
America. 

The great "Navy League" of Germany with its 1,000,000 
members, its staff of eloquent lecturers, its periodicals and its 
huge mass meetings, although avowedly directed against no 

1 These anti-British sentiments seemed all the more alarming because 
of the influence of the government upon the press in Germany, and the 
likelihood that it could have silenced the worst offending organs if it 
had really possessed the desire to do so. The socialist press was mostly 
pacific: the "semi-official" papers often offended the worst. 



390 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

one foreign nation in particular, was a perfect forcing-house 
for anti-British propaganda. Other fleets Germany was soon 
to outvie, but until she had driven that of Britain to bay there 
was no real outlet to Teutonic aspirations. Indeed the tone of 
some of the arguments implied that England was committing 
an iniquity when she refused to scale down her naval appro- 
priations in order to let Germany catch up with her. The 
weaker sides of English life, the smug commercialism, the af- 
fectations of indolence, the short hours of labor, the excessive 
fondness for outdoor sports, the refusal to assume military 
obligations, even the predilection for afternoon tea in lieu of 
coffee or beer, — all these made many a German writer or lec- 
turer imitate Jugurtha, the ancient Numidian king, when he 
cried on quitting degenerate Rome: "0 venal city, and soon to 
perish — if but a purchaser be found!" Millions in the 
Fatherland were willing to name the purchaser — provided the 
price were not in gold but in iron. 1 

The effect of all this in Britain was of course to produce 
wrath, distrust, and considerable counter-reviling. A great 
part of the Pan-German literature luckily was never indeed 
put into English, but quite enough was translated to produce 
a most disagreeable impression. England in turn had a fair 
supply of her jingoes, pamphleteers and mud-slingers : and 
naturally her responsible statesmen were obliged to take seri- 
ous notice of undeniable facts. As was written in 1911, "If 
a nation constantly proclaims that it is the strongest and 
greatest people on earth, that its destiny is to dominate the 
world, that it will do so by the use of the mightiest armaments 
the world has ever seen, and that it will use them instantly 
and mercilessly against those who thwart its will, what wonder 
that its neighbors take it at its word and insure one another's 
prosperity and safety by ententes and understandings?" 2 

The above is certainly true. It was, however, not merely 
the angry disparagement of Britain that led to this tension 
with Germany, but the continual growth of the German fleet. 
"With a civil-speaking Germany, Englishmen might not have 

i See note at end of chapter. 

2 "The Round Table," December, 1911. 



THE GROWING ENMITY 391 

been so anxious: but new threats and the clamorous forging 
of new armor went on together. The result was the constant 
tightening of the diplomatic bow. 

So long as Germany was merely a military power, English- 
men could regard its disesteem with relative indifference. 
Great armies could not swim the North Sea. It was when 
Germany, without in the least reducing her land armaments, 
began to add battleship to battleship until the naval experts 
could play with the question whether the English fleet was 
equal to stopping a great convoy of transports over to the 
east coast of Britain, that a situation arose promising infinite 
trouble. For her naval policy the kaiser's government could 
indeed advance excellent arguments, at least for Germans. 
The dignity of the Empire required that it should be powerful 
on the seas as well as on the land. The multiplication of Ger- 
man foreign commerce required a corresponding protection 
which only a fleet could give. A blockade of German ports 
would be ruinous to industry even if Holland and Scandi- 
navia remained open. It was even alleged that since Italy 
and Austria were allies they must be aided by the German 
navy in the Mediterranean against the large southern squad- 
rons of France. 

None of these arguments went to the base of the matter. 
Germany could punish France or Russia, if they molested her 
commerce, by a swift march upon their capitals. A much 
smaller fleet than was projected would have effectively dis- 
couraged America or Japan from any outrages on Germany's 
maritime rights. Nor had Germany anything real to dread 
from England. British "navalism" was a bogey, useful 
mainly to frighten money out of the purses of Teutonic tax- 
payers. In times of peace German traders competed with 
Englishmen in every British colony, and North German Lloyd 
steamers actually cut into the profits of the British lines carry- 
ing passengers and freight from England herself to India, 
Australia and John Bull's other colonies. The islanders 
grumbled, but there was not a single instance of a British 
warship being employed to diminish a German's just gains 
by a pfenning. 



392 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

In case of war, indeed, Britain might have blockaded Ham- 
burg and Bremen and seized much German shipping ; but she 
could have inflicted no direct harm upon the Kaiser's empire. 
If German diplomacy had been able to keep on decent terms 
with its land neighbors, food and every other necessity would 
have flowed in from France and Russia. Before the opening 
of the Morocco question England was cordially disliked both 
at Paris and St. Petersburg. The enmeshing of her power in 
a prolonged indecisive war with Germany would have been a 
direct invitation to France to ask her to move out of Egypt 
and to Russia to push home every darling project in Afghan- 
istan and the far East. Indeed, had the successors of Bis- 
marck really known how to extend the olive branch to the 
Third Republic and to the Czar, they might have gotten the 
navies of the Dual Alliance (as we see William II unskillfully 
attempted in 1905) to help them to pull down the power of 
that "perfidious Albion' ' which every French lad up to 
1870 had been taught was "the natural enemy." Finally a 
war with Germany provoked by England would have been a 
direct present to her other great commercial rival, America, 
of an opportunity to gobble up a large part of the trade of 
the world. 1 In short, any attempt by Britain to use her great 
navy to sweep German commerce and shipping from the seas 
would have been tremendously costly and run the risk of all 
kinds of failure. No serious English statesman (however 
bellicose) would have advocated it save under the most griev- 
ous kind of provocation. 

Nevertheless, for better or for worse the building of the 
new German navy went on. So long as only the old style four- 
gun battleships were in vogue, 2 the initial superiority of 
England was so great that it seemed hopeless for Teutonic 
ambition to attempt to rival it. But in 1905, in an excess of 
cleverness, the British admiralty committed a serious blun- 
der. To show their competitors that they were mere tyros 
in naval architecture, the royal shipyards suddenly produced 

1 An opportunity of course duly used by Americans between 1914 and 
1917. 

2 Vessels like the American Wisconsin or Missouri. 



THE GROWING ENMITY 393 

the famous "Dreadnaught," the original " all-big-gun battle- 
ship ' ' — with cruiser speed and ten 12-inch guns. 1 For the mo- 
ment British sailors snapped their fingers gleefully. Here 
was the type of a ship whereof not one craft flew the pennon of 
the Kaiser. But High Admiral Von Tirpitz and his august 
master quickly grasped what had happened. The "dread- 
naught" had rendered all the other battleships obsolete: 
ergo, — the great British fleet of pre-dreadnaughts was of only 
waning value. Britain had one new style vessel and Germany 
none : but if the latter seized her opportunity there was noth- 
ing to prevent her from building dreadnaughts almost as 
rapidly as England. By a prompt effort the supremacy of 
"Britannia" would become at least an open question. 

Imperial influence and the great skill of Von Tirpitz in 
wheedling for votes in the Reichstag won their way. The 
recurring tension over Morocco served to loosen German purse- 
strings. The naval programs slid through the Reichstag with 
constantly weakening opposition. Even the socialists used 
the great building projects more as an opportunity to get 
concessions in other matters than as things to oppose. It was 
not until 1910 that the first German "dreadnaught" was com- 
missioned. England already had ten vessels of the type. But 
with his program once legally voted and the money in hand, 
Von Tirpitz built rapidly. The industrial efficiency of the 
new Germany was admirably displayed. Early in 1914 she 
had ready for action 17 all-big-gun battleships or battle cruis- 
ers. England had then indeed 29 : but considering her vast 
imperial interests and the great difficulty the British would 
have in concentrating all their capital ships for a single action 
in the North Sea, one may wisely assert that could the gap 
have been made a little narrower Germany might have risked 
a decisive naval battle. If she had lost the battle England 

i It may be said that America was preparing to build a similar ship, 
but Congress delayed making the appropriation our architects desired. 

The German navy department showed little spontaneity in its de- 
signs. Most of its best ships were pretty complete imitations of Brit- 
ish or American models. Certain vessels (e.g., the old Kaiser class), 
in which some originality was attempted by using a great number of 
small guns, turned out most disappointingly. 



394 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

at worst could only have blockaded her: had she won the 
battle, the British empire would have crumbled like a house 
of cards and almost every Pan-Germanist dream would have 
been instantly fulfilled. 

Under these circumstances what wonder that Englishmen 
took alarm? 

The situation was not eased by the intervention of William 
II. Did the Emperor realize that some day his correspond- 
ence with Nicholas II would see the light, and the world would 
know that he had endeavored to confront Britain, unfriended, 
with an enormous European coalition ? Possibly having failed 
in 1905 to make a bargain with the Czar, and realizing that 
Edward VII was circumventing his attempts to get allies for 
some great adventure, the Emperor, with whom consistency 
was never an abiding virtue, decided to attempt to placate 
English opinion. In 1907 he wrote somewhat privately to 
Lord Tweedmouth, British first lord of the admiralty, pro- 
testing against "this perpetual quoting of the German 
danger" as ''utterly unworthy of the great British nation, 
with its world-wide Empire and mighty commerce." His 
lordship replied to His Majesty by communicating the naval 
estimates for the coming year 1908-9, providing for only two 
battleships, the smallest number England had laid down since 
1898. Evidently the emperor made good use of his knowledge. 
If the then Liberal government of England, intent as it was 
on strictly internal reforms, did not care to build very many 
war-ships this was no reason why he should imitate them. In 
March, 1908, a new navy law was passed at Berlin, providing 
for a general speeding up of the whole German naval program. 
In that year 4 new battleships were to be laid down, and 
between 1906 and 1908 9 German battleships were actually 
authorized as against only 8 British. Whatever his nephew's 
motives, Edward VII was no fool, and in the summer of 1908 
he had an interview with William at Cronberg, in which he 
explained the suspicions and fears which his naval policy was 
awakening. William abruptly refused to discuss with any 
foreign government his right to build war-ships and is said 
to have "avowed his intention of going to war rather than 



THE GROWING ENMITY 395 

submit to such a thing. ' ' Edward returned home, presumably 
with private warnings to British statesmen. Then the kaiser 
delivered himself of an astonishing interview with an English 
diplomatist, which w r as published in the "London Telegraph," 
October 28, 1908. 

''You English," said the Emperor, "are mad, mad, mad as 
March hares. What has come over you that you are given 
over to suspicions that are quite unworthy of a great nation? 
I have declared . . . that it is one of the dearest wishes of ray 
life to live on the best terms w T ith England. Have I ever been 
false to my word? Falsehood and prevarication are alien to 
my nature. . . . This [suspicion] is a personal insult which I 
resent. . . . The prevailing sentiment of large sections of the 
middle and lower classes of my own people is not friendly to 
England. I am therefore, so to speak, in the minority in my 
own land, but it is a minority of the best element, just as it is 
in England respecting Germany." 

Here was a statement from an unimpeachable source that 
the majority of Germans hated England, and that the em- 
peror (at least so he said) was at variance wdth his own 
people. But this ruler had just declined to make the slight- 
est concession in the way of halting the naval program in 
which a great part of the unfriendliness focused. The result 
was an unheaval of British opinion that could not be ignored. 
A highly educational and popular play, "An Englishman's 
Home, ' ' taught the unimaginative middle class public what it 
would mean to have Teutonic invaders suddenly landing on 
their East Coast. There was a bitter fight in the Liberal cab- 
inet : — so many demands for money for old-age pensions, and 
many another state philanthropy, and a corresponding desire 
to reduce taxes ! Certain of the ministers, e. g., John Burns, 
Lord Morley, etc., seem to have refused to see the hole through 
the ladder, to realize that a great war was in any sense pos- 
sible. But the majority were convinced, albeit sorely against 
their wills. Money was diverted to the fleet. Mr. Asquith, 
the premier, announced in 1909 the intention of the Liberal 
government to maintain the "unassailable supremacy" of 
Britain upon the seas. From that time until 1914 the distance 



396 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

between the two fleets was never allowed to close quite up to 
the point of danger for the islanders. 

During that interval matters did not really mend. The 
Agadir incident (1911) was treated by many Germans — in- 
cluding many who were anything but extremists — as a na- 
tional humiliation that could never have come to pass save that 
England had put her navy at the disposal of France, and that 
the German fleet was still unequal to its task. After the 
Morocco trouble had been at last disposed of, however, the 
Kaiser invited Lord Haldane, a promiuent Liberal minister, 
to visit Berlin. Haldane was peculiarly welcome in Germany : 
he had been educated there and spoke of it as his ''spiritual 
country": he was therefore well qualified to bring the two 
nations together. His visit nevertheless was utterly fruitless. 

Haldane arrived in February, 1912. Two days before his 
arrival the emperor's ministers had introduced an increased 
army and navy budget in the Reichstag. This was not a 
promising beginning for negotiations: but the chancellor 
Bethmann-Hollweg desired "conversations" and they took 
place. Haldane was authorized to assure Bethmann-Hollweg 
that England had no secret treaty with Russia and France, 
although she would have supported France in the Agadir case 
because she had herself a great interest in the result. The 
Chancellor proposed thereupon a treaty which provided that 
neither England nor Germany should enter into any project 
or combination for the purpose of attacking the other. This 
sounded fair upon its surface, but obviously left the way open 
for Germany to attack France or Russia on her own terms, 
with England standing helplessly by. The upshot might 
have been to leave Germany supreme on the Continent, and 
with England isolated and exposed to the second leap of the 
now colossal Teutonic empire. Haldane balked at the terms. 
England, he thought, could only promise to oppose any "ag- 
gressive or unprovoked attack upon Germany." 

1 ' How can you define what is meant by ' aggressive and un- 
provoked attack'?" asked the chancellor. 

"How many grains make a heap?" responded his guest. 
1 1 But one knows a heap when one sees one. ' ' 



THE GROWING ENMITY 397 

The real issue, however, was over the steady increase of the 
German fleet. There was a solemn luncheon at which the 
Emperor, Admiral von Tirpitz and again Bethniann-Hollweg 
all conferred with Haldane. The Englishman put it bluntly 
that there was no good in an agreement if Germany was 
going to increase her battleships and then have England do 
the same, and he made it clear England intended to lay down 
two keels for her rival's one. The Emperor and Von Tirpitz 
were ''visibly disturbed" at the suggestion that no political 
agreement could be made without a curtailment of the imperial 
naval program. They argued that the naval scheme for 
Germany was fixed in advance by law and that it was impos- 
sible to change it. The most that could be promised was a 
"retardation" of the new ships. In minor matters, e.g., the 
control by Britain of the Eastern outlet of the Bagdad rail- 
way, Haldane 's hosts were ready to make concessions. He 
departed, however, with nothing really accomplished. It was 
evident Germany wished England to promise to stay neutral 
in case she herself undertook to crush France : — and this Eng- 
land would not do. It was equally evident that England 
wished Germany to pare down her battleship program as 
being aimed directly at her — and this Germany would not do. 
Nothing therefore resulted from the imperial luncheon party 
save a clear understanding by certain British statesmen at 
least, that they had sent their most acceptable emissary to 
Berlin to heal the feud, and lo ! he had not healed it. 

Bethmann-Hollweg later stated in the Reichstag that when 
Haldane asked him for some guarantee (provided England 
promised to remain neutral) that Germany would not fall 
on France and destroy her, l ' I replied that the policy of peace 
which Germany had pursued for more than forty years ought 
to save us from such a question. " x It is to be wondered 
whether His Excellency, the chancellor, imagined that English 
public men had no idea of the main teachings of Pan- 
Germanism ? 

There were some more negotiations at London, but they all 
came to nothing. Germany would not modify her naval pol- 

i Bethmann-Hollweg speaking in the Reichstag, August 19th, 1915. 



398 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

icy, which seemed directed straight at England : * and she 
would not sign any agreement which did not seem to give her 
carte blanche to overrun the rest of the world with England 
looking on in dumb neutrality. This was practically the end 
of attempts at a formal agreement. In 1912 and again in 1913 
Mr. Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, did 
indeed make public proposals for a "naval holiday" — i.e., 
in whatever year Germany decided not to build any new war- 
ships England would refrain likewise: and in this way "with- 
out any negotiations, bargaining, or the slightest restriction 
upon the sovereign freedom of either power," relief might be 
obtained. 2 Churchill's suggestion fell on very stony ground. 
Von Tirpitz, full of pride in his growing battle-fleet, would 
have none of it. The Pan-Germans at once pounced on the 
First Lord's statement as an official admission that England 
was wearying in her purpose to keep up a supreme navy. 
A little more exertion on their own part and the Mistress of 
the Seas would be mistress no longer. There was never a 
sign of a naval holiday. England continued to build new 
ships, practically on the ratio of eight for Germany's five, 
down to the catastrophe of 1914. 

The events since 1900 had sufficiently convinced English- 
men of all but the extreme radical wing that a great navy was 
the only reasonable life insurance for the nation. Had they 
been persuaded otherwise, undoubtedly the outbreak of Arma- 
geddon would have been followed in a few months by so com- 

i Germans sometimes complained that Englishmen saw the United 
States building a navy nearly as strong as that of the kaiser, and yet 
took no umbrage. Why, if there was not gross partiality, were there not 
complaints addressed to Washington as well as to Berlin? The com- 
plete answer was that behind the American fleet there was practically 
no army whatever. Behind the German fleet there was a vast army, 
the landing of a fraction whereof on British shores meant the ruin of 
the British Empire. The German fleet was not unwisely likened to 
"the head of the lance" for the conquest of England. The battleships 
were to clear the way for the transports and the many army corps of 
the invasion. 

2 Churchill used very plain speaking, however, in describing the naval 
rivalry. He called England's navy a "necessity," Germany's a "luxury" 
— to the great wrath of the Pan-Germans. 



THE GROWING ENMITY 399 

plete a victory for Teutonia as would have realized the Pan- 
Germans ' wildest dreams. But Englishmen of the predomi- 
nant Liberal party utterly refused to listen to the proposition 
that not merely a great navy, but also a great army were need- 
ful if their presumptive enemies were to be held at bay. The 
most they would consider was sending a modest expeditionary 
force from their limited old-style professional army to give 
France a little friendly aid, while their navy swept the seas 
and kept London snug and warm whatever the fate of Paris. 
The blindness of otherwise highly able English leaders to the 
fact that the life of their empire could be menaced by a land- 
drive upon the Channel ports, or upon Egypt or the Persian 
Gulf, would seem today inconceivable to retrospective Amer- 
icans did we not find so many among our own wise and good 
who, long after 1914, continued to asseverate that the United 
States needed neither army nor fleet and that our own partici- 
pation in the European war was merely a wicked, disordered 
dream. 

There were indeed many Englishmen of rank and influence 
who declared that the storm would blow by land as well as by 
sea, and that something more than "territorials" — a kind of 
glorified volunteer militia — must be ready to meet it. But 
these men were for the most part members of the Conservative 
party, out of sympathy with the Liberal ministry, and cor- 
dially hated by the Liberal voters because of many bitter do- 
mestic questions. King Edward VII had died in 1910, after 
accomplishing a great work in creating the Triple Entente — 
the informal but genuine "cordial understanding" with 
France and Russia. Had he lived, he might have done some- 
thing to persuade his countrymen to increase their army: — 
but his son George V was relatively young, inexperienced 
and fain to keep clear of even indirect political action. 

One great voice was indeed raised strenuously for some 
form of compulsory military service : that of Lord Roberts, the 
doughty old conqueror of South Africa. A clear-headed, 
practical man, able to take the Pan-Germans from their own 
point of view, he strove earnestly to tell the truth to his coun- 
trymen and shake them out of their smug self-confidence. In 



400 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

October, 1912, he delivered a tremendous speech at Manchester 
warning Englishmen that Germans were planning a speedy 
war against Great Britain, that this war would come the 
moment the Teutonic forces were ready, that the policy of a 
ruthless stroke applied by Bismarck in 1866 and 1870 would 
be used over again, and that "Germany strikes when Ger- 
many's hour has struck." He therefore urged universal 
military service. 

The rejection of his plea by the Liberal leaders of England 
was furious and disdainful. "The Nation," their chief 
weekly, carried a fiery article on "A Diabolical Speech," de- 
scribing Roberts as speaking merely according to the "crude 
lusts and fears which haunt the unimaginative soldier's 
brain." "The Manchester Guardian," their chief daily, 
flatly denied Roberts' facts and premises, and declared that 
Germany was never accused with justice "of breaking her 
word, of disloyalty to her engagements, or of insincerity." 
And so they laughed him to scorn. 1 

And thus through 1913 and into 1914 events moved forward 
— outwardly calm, but within the fires of international hatred 
burning: England utterly distrustful of Germany but only 
half girded for the worst: Germany looking on England as 
the chief element which held her back from her ever-strength- 
ening ambition — a land empire across Europe and Asia, a 
sea empire with innumerable colonies, and a great dominion in 
South America easily acquired by smashing the Monroe Doc- 
trine 2 after the United States had been left isolated by the 

i To make my own position clear, I would say that the program for 
internal reforms, urged by the English Liberals during the last decade, 
seems on the whole admirable. It was the misfortune of the Liberals, 
however, that most of them became so intent on distracting and violent 
domestic problems, that they failed to take proper heed of the growing 
foreign danger. Like the ancient Greek philosopher, intent on study- 
ing the heavens they almost walked into a well. 

2 Germans have repeatedly stated in my presence that without Brit- 
ish help America could never uphold the Monroe Doctrine, which was 
really entirely to British advantage, that we ought to welcome a German 
protectorate in Southern Brazil, etc. Whether the United States could 
have defended the Monroe Doctrine unaided is, of course, a question 
not to be settled here. 



THE GROWING ENMITY 401 

ruin of the British fleet, — in short, a greater Roman Empire. 
In 1911 Rohrbach, the distinguished German publicist, 
summed up a formidable political theory in four words: 
"Germany's fate is England." 

GERMAN HATRED OF BRITAIN 

The antipathy and the contempt for the English which prevailed in 
Germany in the dozen years preceding Armageddon is of course known 
to every visitor to the country who went off the common beat of tour- 
ist travel. I well recall being obliged at sundry small inns, eating- 
houses and the like, to have to explain that I was an American in 
order to get civil treatment from some of the guests and waiters 

In 1905 I vividly remember being thrown in company with two 
Bavarian soldiers upon a furlough. They were men evidently from 
good middle class families and were not ordinary conscripts but "one 
year volunteers" (i.e., thanks to superior education, they had been 
allowed to reduce their time in the army). At first they were posi- 
tively insulting because they deemed their travelling companions to be 
English. When they realized they had to deal with Americans, "who 
had fought the English just as we want to," their manner changed, 
and with artless candor they described with many details their ardent 
hopes of how they could in their time fight the British, "very much 
more gladly we assure you than the French," how after a few volleys 
the foe would surely run "howling like cowards for mercy," how then 
the Germans would use their bayonets, give no quarter, etc., etc., add- 
ing to this recital many things their lieutenant had told them about 
the certainty of war with Britain, and the need for instant readiness. 
All this of course was nearly nine years before the actual coming of 
Armageddon. 

Several years ago circulars describing the English naval programme 
were distributed to all the students of Berlin university, and they were 
urged to attend a mass meeting to petition the government to take 
effective counter-measures against this "menace." The circulars were 
placed in class-rooms and buildings where by no chance political propa- 
ganda could have been permitted save by high university authority. 
At the subsequent meeting the speeches against Great Britain were as 
violent and inflammatory as if there had been a serious diplomatic issue 
then with England, and war immediately in the air. As a matter of 
fact there were for the nonce almost no grave issues pending with Eng- 
land or even with France or Russia. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 

DURING the later years of his life Otto von Bismarck 
was surveying the possible causes for war which might 
arise in the world. And the danger spot he selected was a 
country little known at the time and which had not then been 
in any way a source of dispute : Morocco. Bismarck, in this, 
was a true prophet. For while the Moroccan difficulty did not 
cause the European war it undoubtedly contributed to bring- 
ing it about. It left the nations of Europe in a state of fever- 
ish tension and of hostility, a situation out of which a war 
may easily proceed. 

What was this country of Morocco and why did it become a 
European problem ? It was the last independent state on the 
north coast of Africa, occupying the north-west corner of the 
continent, with an area of about 219,000 square miles and a 
population somewhat exceeding five million. Formerly it 
had been a stronghold of fanatical Mohammedanism and the 
home of daring pirates — the Salee rovers — who had been the 
terror of mariners as far north as the English Channel. But 
of late it had greatly fallen from its high estate. The sultans 
had grown weaker and weaker, the last able representative of 
the line, Mulai Hassan, died in 1894, although his policy had 
been continued with some success by an able minister, Ben 
Hamed, up to 1901. 

But it was not the previous strength or the present weak- 
ness of the country that made Morocco a European problem: 
it was the great national resources of the land. Morocco was, 
with the possible exception of Asia Minor, the last "white 
man's country" left unoccupied by the European nations. 
The land was rich in minerals of every sort, iron especially — 

402 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 403 

that great necessity of modern industry. Its agricultural re- 
sources were immense and it had a rich soil, which the Moroc- 
can native had barely scratched. The climate, especially in 
the uplands of southern Morocco, was entirely suitable for 
Europeans, and the small number of inhabitants in proportion 
to the area permitted of large immigration. No wonder that 
the European peoples rushed forward to gain the chance to 
exploit such a prize. 

But, unfortunately, they did not come forward singly or 
confine their attention each to certain localities. They pushed 
their interests all over Morocco, and as each group of nationals 
felt the competition from a group from some other nation they 
appealed to their home government for aid and protection, 
thus making of their economic quarrels international ques- 
tions. The diplomacy of Europe was busily occupied with 
the economic squabbles of different national groups desiring 
to exploit the mines, work the lands or build the railroads of 
Morocco. 

Such, then, were the roots of the Moroccan problem. 

But this was not all of the difficulty. The people of Mo- 
rocco, in whose land these European groups wished to build 
railroads and work mines, were fanatical Mohammedans and 
as such bitterly opposed to the entry of Europeans into 
Morocco. Nor did they manifest their displeasure merely 
passively ; whenever possible they endeavored to put an end to 
these activities by violence. But, again, these activities were 
being carried on as a result of concessions granted by the 
Moroccan government, and it was, therefore, the duty of that 
government to give them protection. This duty, however, the 
Moroccan government seemed unable to fulfill. 

This brings us to what is, perhaps, the real crux of the 
Moroccan difficulty, the weakening of the government of the 
sultan. I have already mentioned the fact that the gov- 
ernment of Morocco had sadly fallen from its former glory; 
that the last man capable of really dealing with the situation, 
Ben Hamed, had died in 1901. Since that day it is hardly 
too much to state that anarchy had been the rule in the sul- 
trVs dominions. The government was a feudal one. The 



404 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

country was divided among various tribes, each with its cai'd, 
or chief, some of whom had more real power than the sultan 
himself. The control of the sultan over these was dependent 
on the amount of military force he could bring against them, 
and as this military force was by no means strong, each cai'd 
was generally left to do what was right in his own eyes except 
during the rare moments when the sultan and his army were 
in the neighborhood. Therefore, if a cai'd, either for personal 
reasons or because of pressure from his followers, decided to 
oppose the European influx, it was exceedingly hard for the 
sultan to bring him to book or to protect the endangered 
Europeans. 

In addition, the character of the sultan introduced a new 
complication. It seems, unfortunately, only too often true 
that a mixture of Eastern manners and Western civilization 
produces, in a character, the vices of both and few of the 
virtues of either. 1 Such a character was the then sultan, 
Abdul- Aziz. He had heard enough of the civilization of the 
West to long for it and not enough to acquire a discriminating 
taste. Photography, billiard-tables, automobiles, even an 
American bar were shipped, at great expense, to Morocco to 
gratify the tastes of the Sultan. The religious feelings of 
the Moroccan people were horrified by the spectacle of the 
ladies of the harem, with unveiled countenances, riding, in the 
Palace grounds, on bicycles provided by the kindly generosity 
of Abdul- Aziz. Of the palace orgies, or of the wild extrava- 
gance of the sultan it is unnecessary to speak, but their effect 
on his people may be easily imagined. It turned their hearts 
from him and contributed in no small degree to the increase 
of the disorder. 

For the extravagance of the sultan Europe can hardly be 
held responsible. But when it brought him into debt, when he 
was obliged to search Europe for those who would take his 
loans, the credit and stability and general character of the 
Moroccan government were forced anew on European atten- 
tion. If money was to be loaned to Abdul-Aziz some care 

i Another instance of this can be found in the career of the extrava- 
gant Khedive Ismail of Egypt. See p. 100, 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 405 

must be taken not only that it should be paid but also that it 
should be expended with some degree of wisdom. This and 
the prevalent disorder practically forced Europe to consider 
some form of intervention in Moroccan affairs. 

What form was this intervention to take? Was it to be 
entrusted to a single power ? Or to a group of powers — which 
would mean the internationalization of Morocco? One thing 
appeared certain : this intervention must be backed up by an 
armed force capable of maintaining order, and, secondly, a 
firm hand must be placed on the Moroccan government. Wliat 
power or group of powers, however, was willing to go to this 
trouble and expense? And, if they did, ought they not to be 
rewarded to an especial extent in the returns from the ex- 
ploitation of the country? Finally, if this intervention took 
place, with the intervening power or powers holding a strong 
army in the country, could Morocco be said to be an indepen- 
dent state ? Would it not go the way of Egypt and Tunis and 
become a dependency? 

On the fact that some intervention in Morocco was needed 
the European powers seem to have been agreed, but no agree- 
ment was reached as to the power or powers to which this in- 
tervention was to be entrusted. The prize was too great and 
each power was too jealous of the others to allow anyone to 
secure it without a struggle. Moreover those powers which 
had vested national interests in Morocco feared that the state 
which was then allowed supremacy, would use this opportunity 
to make Morocco a closed field for its own nationals. From 
this question and from the international economic disputes 
arose the Moroccan problem. 

What claims had the various European powers for the 
position of restoring order in Morocco? 

First of all, let us consider England. She had probably 
been the first to secure interests in Morocco — the story of 
McLean and Harris, the two supporters of England in Mo- 
rocco, reads like a page from English eighteenth century 
colonial expansion. At the opening of the twentieth century 
she had by far the largest share of the Moroccan trade, and 
this leading position she managed to keep during the next tea 



406 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

years, although she was rapidly losing it to France. But 
England seems to have been unwilling to undertake the re- 
sponsibility — the restoration and maintenance of order — 
which this privileged position placed on her. She was too 
much occupied elsewhere — in South Africa and in India. 
And so, gradually. Englishmen — McLean and Harris as well 
as the government — came to the conclusion that this position 
of supremacy must be allowed to pass to France, provided that 
France allowed full economic opportunity to all in Morocco. 
They were unwilling that a strong military and naval power 
like France should control that part of Morocco opposite 
Gibraltar, but here certain claims of Spain — to be mentioned 
later — came to British aid. But it is to be noted that England 
in a period when she was in relations in no way friendly to 
France — for it was in the years of colonial quarrels between 
1895 and 1902 — came to the conclusion that France was the 
best power on which to confer the control of Morocco. And at 
this time England was distinctly friendly to Germany! 

These claims of France to the supreme control in Morocco 
rested on various grounds. In the first place, geographical. 
The possessions of France surrounded Morocco on two sides, 
east and south, and, with the exception of a small strip border- 
ing on the Spanish colony of Reo del Oro, the entire land fron- 
tiers of the sultan bordered on French colonies. France there- 
fore was better fitted than any other power with bases from 
which such military forces as were necessary for the mainte- 
nance of order might operate. Moreover, to France, a state of 
order in Morocco was far more necessary than to any other 
state, for disorder in the sultan 's dominions might easily affect 
the neighboring French colonies. And in case of war an inde- 
pendent and disorderly Morocco would form a convenient base 
from which irregular expeditions might be made on French 
colonies. In the second place, there were economic bases for 
this claim. Although French trade was not in the lead in 
Morocco it was fast taking that position, aided by the favor- 
able geographical situation. Indeed, Algeria and Morocco 
economically belonged together and could best be developed 
together. 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 407 

But these French claims were zealously contested by Ger- 
many. Germany's trade was still a very poor competitor 
with that of France and England, but it was growing, being 
organized in the true Teutonic fashion. It may be doubted, 
however, if it could ever overcome the advantages which 
geographical position had conferred on France and take the 
first position. And yet it is only fair to point out that Ger- 
many had certain rights and interests in Morocco which they 
were entitled to protect, and that reasonable German action 
taken to this end is justifiable. 

The German position, however, seems to have been based 
on broader considerations. She had entered late into the race 
for colonies, and had been, or thought she had been, left behind 
in the rewards. And here was the last "white man's coun- 
try" obtainable, passing into the hands of France ! This con- 
sideration, alone, seems to have been the factor which moved 
the German colonial party and the Pan-Germans to make 
every effort to prevent such a result. The real Moroccan ques- 
tion was lost, in German minds, in the larger question of the 
division of the pleasant and profitable places of the earth — a 
division in which they claimed France and England had se- 
cured an undue share. At bottom, then, it appears to have 
been a question of prestige. 

Spain had certain claims, rather shadowy, but none the less 
earnestly insisted on, to the northern part of Morocco. But 
beyond that her interests did not go. Her trade in the rest 
of Morocco was almost nil, her resources in men and money for 
the preservation of order in the entire country were insuf- 
ficient. Her claim to northern Morocco, however, as a 
"sphere of influence" happened to coincide with the wishes 
of Great Britain. For the latter power wished to prevent 
France from acquiring the control of the Moroccan coast 
across from Gibraltar and so it urged the claims of Spain in 
this region. 

Thus every one of the four powers mentioned had claims in 
Morocco which they were justified in protecting. And one 
of them, France, was by its position peculiarly fitted to take 
the task of maintaining order and directing the future of 



408 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

Morocco. But another of the powers, Germany, was unwill- 
ing to acquiesce in such an arrangement, and her constant 
efforts to prevent it are the chief feature of the Moroccan 
problem of the first eleven years of the twentieth century. 

The modern phase of the problem opens with the Anglo- 
French agreement of 1904. By this arrangement England 
agreed to allow the predominant position of France in Morocco 
provided that English trade were protected and that Spanish 
claims were satisfied. In return France agreed to admit 
England's predominant position in Egypt. Up to this period 
France and England had been rivals in the colonial field, a 
rivalry so keen that six years earlier it had nearly brought 
the two countries to war. In April, 1904, however, they came 
to an agreement on the points in dispute in a series of treaties 
of which the Moroccan-Egyptian agreement was one. In 
October of the same year this agreement was completed by a 
treaty between France and Spain by which the Moroccan 
situation of the two was regulated. In both treaties the main- 
tainance of the independence of Morocco was assured. 

Both treaties also contained secret annexes by which, in 
"the event of either government being constrained, by force 
or circumstance" to alter the existing situation, mutual aid 
was promised, and the French-Spanish secret annex laid down 
the bases for a partition of Morocco between France and 
Spain. It is possible to consider these secret annexes as 
destroying all the effect of the public declarations and as in- 
dicating the covert intention of proceeding, as soon as possible, 
to a Franco-Spanish absorption of Morocco by English aid. 
It does not seem as if this reasoning is necessarily true. 
Conditions in Morocco were subject to rapid change and any 
government embarking on a policy of maintaining order and 
of directing the sultan's government ought to be prepared 
for all contingencies. And we do know that the great ma- 
jority of Frenchmen, even members of the Colonial party, 
were then and later inclined to oppose any commitment of 
France in Morocco further than was absolutely necessary. 
Secret diplomacy is always dangerous, but, under the cir- 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 409 

cumstances, it may not have been unwise to keep in reserve 
and unknown an arrangement looking to a possible future con- 
tingency. The exact intention of the French government at 
this time is hard to discover; possibly it was not sure itself; 
but this line of reasoning toward the secret treaties appears 
to be, at least, not impossible. 

Germany's first attitude toward these agreements was not 
hostile. Von Biilow, the German Chancellor, stated that 
Germany 's interests in Morocco were entirely economic, and as 
long as these interests were not endangered, she would offer 
no opposition. But as time went on this earlier position 
was modified. Many reasons contributed to this. First was 
the rather discourteous attitude of M. Delcasse, the French 
foreign minister, in declining to give to Germany official 
notice of the Agreements of 1904. Then, too, the secret 
agreements may have leaked out to such an extent as to give 
Germany the idea that some arrangement detrimental to 
her interests was under consideration. But the real reason 
for her actions in 1905 appears to lie in factors far greater 
than the mere problems of Morocco. 

In the days of Bismarck, Germany had been content to 
wait in calm confidence in her strength and had refused to 
waste her energies and to make enemies in raising barren 
questions of prestige. But with the more feverish days un- 
der William II the idea seems to have developed that Ger- 
many ought to insist on her rights and demand that in every 
problem raised in Europe or in the world she be consulted. 
If such a settlement was made without German co-operation 
it was looked on as a blow to German position and German 
prestige. But these arrangements of 1904 had been drawn 
up without any consultation with Berlin, indeed, as has been 
said, without any official notification to the German govern- 
ment. And so an increasing group in Germany demanded 
that, in the name of the prestige of the imperial government, 
these agreements should be questioned and brought under 
the purview of German diplomacy. 

Gradually this group seems to have secured control of the 
imperial government, although it is doubtful if they ever 



410 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

secured the complete adherence of the Emperor, who seems, 
at this time, to have disliked violent measures against France. 
But the German chancellor, Prince von Biilow, was in a diffi- 
cult political situation at home and needed the support of the 
conservatives, which could only be gained by a more spirited 
foreign policy. And the moment for this display of strength 
was most propitious, while Russia, France's continental ally, 
was undergoing defeat in the war against Japan and the 
European position of France was thereby weakened. It was 
therefore decided in Berlin to challenge this new Anglo- 
French agreement, to "rap the table," in order to show that 
Germany still existed in the world and that she had claims 
which must be satisfied. 

The emperor, William II, was cruising in the Mediter- 
ranean in the early spring of 1905. Suddenly on March 31 
he appeared at Tangier and replied to the greetings addressed 
to him with a speech which at once produced a serious 
diplomatic situation. "It is to the sultan in his position as 
an independent sovereign that I am paying my visit today. 
I hope that under the sovereignty of the sultan a free Morocco 
will remain, open to the peaceful rivalry of all nations, with- 
out monopoly or annexation, on the basis of absolute equality. 
The object of my visit to Tangier is to make it known that 
I am determined to do all that is in my power to safeguard 
efficaciously the interests of Germany in Morocco, for I look 
on the sultan as an absolutely independent sovereign." * 

It was a direct challenge to the Anglo-French treaty in 
which the paramount interests of France in Morocco had been 
admitted, and to the entire foreign policy of friendship with 
England as directed by M. Delcasse. And when this speech 
was backed by an ultimatum that Morocco should be placed 
under an international control, the whole foundation of the 
agreement of 1904 was attacked. 2 But France was in no 

i There is good evidence for the belief that the whole visit and speech 
was arranged by Von Biilow and that William II played an unwilling 
part in the affair. 

2 Delcasse appears to have allowed his policy to run ahead of the mili- 
tary support which might have given it weight. This was shown in the 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 411 

position to fight even though England appears to have 
promised armed aid in case she so elected. 1 Delcasse re- 
signed and France agreed to submit the whole Moroccan ques- 
tion to an international conference to meet at Algeciras in 
1906. 

There is something, as has been already admitted, to be 
said for the German claims in the matter. Germany had 
certain interests which would be destroyed if France were 
allowed to make Morocco a closed preserve for her capitalists. 
But England was in the same position and had Germany de- 
cided to open diplomatic negotiations with England she could 
probably have secured the latter 's aid against such a con- 
tingency without this undue exhibition of table-thumping. 
Indeed the whole affair left an impression which cost Ger- 
many many possible friends at the conference. Moreover 
it was not the secret, but the public clauses of the Moroccan 
treaty which Germany attacked, clauses which she had 
hitherto accepted, and this conduct left a feeling of insecurity 
in Europe. What international agreement would Germany 
decide to attack next! 

Indeed the whole German aim in this affair seems to have 
been to gain prestige and not to protect her interests in 
Morocco. We are far from those days when Bismarck, in 
the calm confidency of Germany's strength, was able to de- 
clare in the Reichstag that "we Germans fear God and 
nothing else in the world and it is the fear of God that makes 
us seek peace and ensue it." Calm confidence gave way to 
a sort of nervous irritability that saw a danger to German 
prestige at every turn and appeared to feel that, unless the 
sabre was rattled every now and then, Germany would be 
forgotten. 

cabinet before his resignation, when the secretaries of war and the navy 
declared hostilities with Germany were impossible. 

i A personal representative of William It, Prince Henckel von Don- 
nersmarck, was sent to warn the people of France that Declasse was 
persona non grata to Germany. This he did in an interview published 
in the "Gaulois" in June, 1905. In October following Delcasse' retorted 
by publishing in the "Matin" the English offer of assistance. 'This state- 
ment was never denied by English statesmen. 



412 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Indeed Germany had spoiled her case — which was not alto- 
gether a bad one at the start — by her bullying methods, and 
when the conference met at Algeciras, a little Spanish town 
near Gibraltar, French diplomacy had arrayed against Ger- 
many almost all of the powers. To this conference had come 
delegates from the United States — called thither, it is said, 
by the German government in the hope of securing their aid — 
but these neutral delegates decided to uphold, in the main, 
the French contentions. Indeed the claim of France was 
based on the very nature of the situation : France alone was 
really well situated to keep order and to guide the Moroccan 
government and these two were necessities in handling the 
problem. Even Italy, Germany's ally, deserted her and 
Austria-Hungary, her most devoted friend, at times showed 
signs of independent action. So a compromise was made — ■ 
a compromise which merely covered the German defeat, 
sketched out in its main outlines, it is said, by President 
Roosevelt in reply to an appeal for aid from the German 
emperor. This act of Algeciras contained in its one hundred 
and twenty-three articles many principles dear to Americans, 
for example, that of the Open Door. It declared the sover- 
eignty and independence of the sultan and the integrity of 
his dominions and made the control, in form, international. 
All these were concessions to Germany. On the other hand 
it admitted the French claim of paramount interests in the 
land and confided to France and Spain the direction and the 
greatest share in this international control. In itself it was 
a splendid document, full of hope for the future. But would 
it work? 

It soon became evident that it would not. The other pow- 
ers involved in the international control, after having as- 
serted their claims in Morocco, promptly withdrew to their 
own affairs and left France and Spain to grapple with the 
Moroccan anarchy and to try to manage the sultan. They 
were willing to take the trade and exploit the resources of 
the country but they shrank from the attendant responsibili- 
ties. England was content to let France control the situa- 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 413 

tion as had been agreed in 1904; Germany, feeling that her 
prestige had been satisfied, turned back to Turkey and the 
Bagdad railway. France and Spain struggled on with the 
growing anarchy, the incompetence of the Sultan, the bank- 
rupt treasury, and the hostile land. 

Under these circumstances the act of Algeciras was un- 
workable. A strong control over Morocco was needed. This 
control could be international, but if the other powers re- 
fused to assist France and Spain, then the control had to be 
vested in these two. And so, in the five years following 
Algeciras, Morocco drifted more and more into the status 
of a Franco-Spanish protectorate or a division between the 
two. Not that this result was greatly desired in either France 
or Spain : both seem to have shrunk from the expense in men 
and money that this obligation would involve, and yet the 
facts of the situation drove them on. Affairs could not con- 
tinue as they were. 

Almost all the European powers were reconciled to the 
protectorate as the ultimate solution: the exception was Ger- 
many. In the first place, her trade in Morocco was growing 
and she feared that it would be destroyed if the protectorate 
was allowed. In the second place, her prestige was bound up 
in the Act of Algeciras. She endeavored in every way, there- 
fore, to check French efforts, intriguing with the Sultan 
and raising questions. Abdul-Aziz, the incompetent, had 
lost his throne to his abler brother Mulai-Hafid, and Germany 
hoped that she could secure the new sultan. In vain, for he 
gradually gravitated toward France. Finally Germany in 
1909 made a swift volte-face. In an agreement with France 
she recognized the paramount interests of the latter in 
Morocco and in return obtained the chance for her subjects 
to associate with the French in all the economic development 
of Morocco. 

Now this agreement practically destroyed the open door 
in Morocco which had been, all along, the great German con- 
tribution. For it set up an economic joint-control in Morocco 
in favor of France and Germany and to the detriment of the 



414 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

other interested powers. For this reason England protested 
against it, but without avail. Again, in it, Germany ad- 
mitted the paramount political interests of France in Morocco, 
a thing which hitherto she had refused to do. The agreement 
was regarded in France as giving her a free hand to deal with 
the sultan in return for economic concessions to Germany. 
Unfortunately the wording of the agreement was so loose as 
to allow two different interpretations by the two parties to it 
and, instead of peace, it led to strife. 1 

It is idle to go into the whole history of the 1909 agree- 
ment — misunderstandings, inability of each government to 
deal with its subjects interested in Morocco, delay on the 
part of France, threats on the part of Germany. Suffice it 
to say that almost immediately after the agreement was signed 
it proved as unworkable as the Algeciras Agreement. Prob- 
ably the most difficult question arose out of the building of 
two military railroads. Since Germany could not be asso- 
ciated in the construction of French military railroads, she 
demanded, as compensation, the prohibition of all outside com- 
petition with the ''Society of Public Works" — an interna- 
tional company for the development of Morocco in which 
France and Germany controlled eighty per cent, of the stock. 
Such an arrangement would make Morocco an almost closed 
field for France and Germany and shut out England to a 
large extent, and this latter power naturally protested. 
France then decided to drop the question of compensation 
despite the fact that M. Cambon, her ambassador in Ger- 
many, urged the danger of such a proceeding. On this and 
on other questions disagreement became rife and trouble was 
evidently brewing. 

It was at this inopportune moment that news came to Paris 
of a bad situation at Fez, the capital of Morocco. Anarchy 
was said to be increasing, the power of the sultan gone, the 
lives of Europeans endangered. How far this information 
was correct seems never to have been entirely settled, but, 
at any rate, it was enough to cause the French government 

i One of the obvious aims of German diplomacy in this agreement 
was to bind France to Germany and separate her from England. 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 415 

to send a strong force inland to Fez to restore order. This 
action, however, in such a critical time was full of danger. 
Germany was disgruntled and would surely seize the op- 
portunity to declare that the Act of Algeciras was violated and 
a new situation had arisen. And, in this view, they would 
have some justification, for a French force once in Fez 
would probably never withdraw — in fact, it never did — and in 
such a situation it was idle to talk of the independence of 
Morocco. Spain promptly took a hand in the game by seiz- 
ing the territory allotted to her by the secret treaty of 1904. 
A new situation had indeed arisen : the Act of Algeciras was 
dead. 

Probably it would have been better for France to have 
openly avowed this fact and to have asked the price of 
Germany's consent. Such seems to have been the advice of 
M. Cambon, the sagacious French ambassador to Germany, 
and to such a course France would probably have come in 
time. But unfortunately there had been two quick changes 
of ministry in Paris, and French policy at this time was 
rather weak and uncertain. Therefore it lost precious time 
while Germany became more and more angry and threaten- 
ing. 

When one army is attacking another, it selects a position to 
assault, not because that position is important in itself so much 
as that it is the weakest spot in the opposing line and that 
defeat there will endanger the entire plan of the enemy. 
Morocco was France's weakest position in world-policy and 
Germany attacked it, not because Morocco in itself was so 
important to her — although some Pan-Germans insisted that 
it was — but because a defeat for France here might force her 
to come to terms elsewhere. And so the story of the events 
of 1911 passes outside the boundaries of the Moroccan problem 
into the wider limits of world policy. These wider limits 
lie somewhat outside the scope of this chapter but they must 
be briefly indicated in order that the final act of the Moroccan 
drama may be clearly understood. 

If we examine the map of Africa, as it was in 1911, between 
the Niger and the Congo rivers, we find two colonies, one of 



416 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Germany — Kamerun — and one of France — the French Congo. 
Both these colonies were typical tropical dependencies — not 
white man's countries — and yet very valuable in the economic 
sense. Each had been farmed out by the respective govern- 
ments to various trading companies of which the leading 
French example was the so-called N'Goko-Sangha Company. 
Unfortunately for world peace the boundary between the 
two colonies was uncertain, border disputes were frequent 1 
and it appears that a more enterprising Germany company had 
encroached on the land of the French company. Despairing 
of any settlement, the French government decided to form a 
co-partnership in the Congo such as had been formed in 
Morocco. But in return for granting this arrangement the 
N'Goko-Sangha Company demanded an indemnity for losses 
sustained to the Germans, and when the French Chamber of 
Deputies refused to vote the indemnity the whole plan fell 
through much to the disgust of the Germans, who had hoped 
to gain much from such an arrangement. 

In the spring of 1911, however, M. Caillaux, at first foreign 
minister, then premier, took up the negotiations again. This 
new negotiation seems to have had a much wider scope. Car- 
ried on in secret — French diplomacy seems to have known 
nothing of it — Caillaux 's negotiations seem to have aimed 
at a general exchange of territories in central Africa, and 
even the cession of French Congo in return for German al- 
lowance of a French protectorate in Morocco. In addition, it 
appears that the French purse was to be opened to the sup- 
port of German economic plans in Turkey and elsewhere. A 
splendid colonial empire in Central Africa, French funds 
for the completion of the Bagdad railway — such was the vision 
opened before the Germans. It is not to be wondered at that 
they seized it. 

Speed was above all necessary. France had taken her share 
— her army was at Fez — and now Germany wished her com- 
pensation. Germany was grumbling, there was talk 2 of "lost 

1 If the evidence given by Tardieu, Le Mystere d'Agadir, be ac- 
cepted, this was admitted by the German company itself, pp 175-6. 

2 In the Reichstag and the newspapers. 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 417 

prestige." Prance might be merely delaying and so Ger- 
many decided to call for a show-down. Unfortunately for her, 
this violence ruined her cause. 

On July 1, the German ambassador notified the French 
government that Germany had decided to send x a warship 
to Agadir, a port in Southern Morocco. This act showed 
that Germany placed herself on an equality with France in 
Morocco, denied all that had gone before, and reopened the 
whole Moroccan problem. Her ostensible reason — protection 
of Germans and prevention of unrest around Agadir — was 
frivolous, for neither Germans nor unrest were present in the 
region. It was merely another gesture with the fist on the 
table, another warning to the world that Germany and Ger- 
man prestige must be considered. It was a mistake because 
it solidified France and ruined any chance the Caillaux 
schemes might have had. It was a crime because it nearly 
plunged Europe into war. 

The new situation was received in France with great calm. 
In England there was more tension, and this was increased 
by the obstinate refusal of Germany, at the start, to give to 
England any statement of her intentions, an action which 
seemed to show a design to exclude England from the nego- 
tiations and treat the Anglo-French Entente as a thing of 
naught. Probably Germany had no such intention, but it was 
felt in England that this matter must be cleared up speedily. 
And so on July 21st 2 Mr. Lloyd George, speaking for the 
British government, declared at a Guild-hall dinner that Eng- 
land could not and would not be disregarded, that England's 
interests in Morocco and treaty relations with France must 
be taken into account. Probably it would have been wiser 
to wait, for the German government had, a day or so be- 

i The vessel actually sent was the insignificant gun -boat. The Panther, 
but any vessel flying the Hohenzollern naval flag and ordered under the 
given circumstances to Agadir carried the chances of war in its maga- 
zines. A few shots would have sufficed. 

2 The effect of the Lloyd George speech was increased by the fact 
that the speaker then passed as one of the leading pacifist ministers. 
He took an attitude studiously friendly to Germany up to the end in 
1914. 



418 THE KOOTS OF THE WAR 

fore, decided to give England a frank statement denying 
that they had any intentions of seizing territory in Morocco. 
And in this they were undoubtedly sincere, for if in the days 
immediately following July 1st they had dreamed of a German 
South Morocco, they had soon changed their demands to com- 
pensations elsewhere. 

But the Lloyd George speech changed* matters. Germany 
assumed a tone of injured dignity and war was not far off. 
But neither side seemed anxious to press the matter and on 
July 27th friendly relations were again resumed. The Ger- 
man government stated its ends in the negotiations with 
France, and the English government agreed not to interfere. 

These negotiations between France and Germany had been 
dragging on since July 1st. On July 7th the German gov- 
ernment agreed, in principle, to a French protectorate in 
Morocco — although they wished to limit this — but in return 
demanded heavy compensations in the French Congo. At 
times the Germans showed a desire to take all and give little 
or nothing, and in the second week of September it seemed 
as if the negotiations would be broken off. A panic set in on 
the Berlin bourse, and war was generally expected. But 
good sense finally prevailed and the negotiations were carried 
on to a final settlement in the Treaty of November 4th, 1911. 
By this the French protectorate in Morocco was admitted, al- 
though France agreed to maintain the open door for the 
trade of outside nations. And in return France ceded to 
Germany a large section in French Congo. 

Thus ended the Moroccan question. Not entirely, for it 
continued to grow for months in the Reichstag and in the 
Pan-German newspapers. The Colonial minister resigned in 
disgust and the German colonial party declared that the 
Fatherland had suffered an intolerable humiliation. These 
men, in their rage, were now ready for desperate measures; 
but official Germany was not — as yet. And so the whole ques- 
tion slowly sank below the horizon, its departure luridly 
illuminated by the flames of Pan-German oratory. On the 
whole its history is a rather sordid story of intrigue and of 
violence. Twice it uearly plunged Europe in war and its 



THE STORM CENTER IN MOROCCO 419 

legacy was an increased mistrust between England and France 
on one side and Germany on the other. It did not cause the 
world war of 1914 but it greatly contributed to the spirit of 
hostility out of which the war came 



CHAPTER XX 

THE TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN THE 

BALKAN WARS 

THE Treaty of Berlin had long been unsatisfactory to all 
its signers. Yet it stood for decades, save only in re- 
spect to Eastern Roumelia, because of the grievous fear that 
any attempt to alter it might precipitate a disastrous general 
war. However the effect of this dread gradually wore off. 
This was partly because Germany and her understudy, Aus- 
tria, were coming to count a great war not always a bane but 
sometimes a blessing: because England and Russia were no 
longer so much at feud as formerly over Balkan questions: 
because the little Balkan nations were becoming conscious of 
their own strength and were willing to take a chance at defy- 
ing the Western Powers, and finally and chiefly because the 
situation created by the Berlin settlement was in many re- 
spects so outrageous that men grew willing to run great risks 
to cure great evils. 

Ever since about 1900 a dangerous explosion in the Balkans 
was increasingly possible. The magazine became ever more 
full of dynamite — but whence would come the detonating 
spark? In 1908 that spark was to be supplied by the first 
Young Turk revolution in Constantinople. 

The crippling and later the downfall of Abdul Hamid cer- 
tainly were not welcomed by Germany, although there is evi- 
dence that the Hohenzollern regime was ceasing to find him a 
useful instrument and was getting ready to change its Otto- 
man friendships. But the upheaval by the Bosporus was 
very welcome to Austria and Bulgaria. It meant that Turkey 
would be so torn by civil strife that she could not risk a war 
if things happened contrary to her liking. The letter of the 
Berlin treaty weighed as nothing against their darling pro- 

420 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 421 

jects to Kaiser Franz Josef and Prince Ferdinand. Their 
only considerations were those of expediency. 

On July 24, 1908, Abdul Hamid, with a bitter grimace, had 
accepted the revived Turkish constitution. On October 5th, 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria proclaimed his complete independence 
and took the lofty title of "tsar." On October 7th, Franz 
Josef's government announced that Bosnia was annexed out- 
right to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. 

These last two acts produced instant wrath in four capitals 
— Constantinople, Belgrade, St. Petersburg and London. Of 
course there was far more anger against Austria than Bul- 
garia. The latter had been independent already in everything 
but name. It merely implied now that Ferdinand, calling 
himself not "prince" but "tsar," could claim all the diplo- 
matic honors of a recognized monarch, and could stop sending 
tribute to Constantinople. Outside of Turkey there was only 
informal protest at his action, and even the Ottomans showed 
that they were not very resentful. After much negotiation, 
when Bulgaria showed her willingness to shoulder a small 
share of the Turkish debt, the sultan formally recognized 
Ferdinand as a royal equal. Bulgaria thus entered the status 
of a completely independent country (April 19, 1909). 

But with Bosnia things were very different. The annexa- 
tion of the country was an actual, and not merely a formal, 
violation of the Berlin treaty, and an aggrandizement of Aus- 
tria to the obvious detriment of her neighbors. The case was 
somewhat as follows: 

I. The Turks had regularly considered Bosnia as part of 
their old empire, albeit for administrative purposes "oc- 
cupied" by Austria. Its permanent loss to them was an open 
blow at the Young Turks then striving to grasp the Ottoman 
government. At Constantinople therefore there was wrath, 
with protests and a fierce boycott of Austrian wares. The 
Turks were helpless, nevertheless, before the Hapsburg mili- 
tary power. They were at length induced to remain quiet 
and not to enter upon a hopeless struggle, the more especially 
as European opinion would never have consented to let a 
partially Christian land lapse again to Moslem tyranny. 



422 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

II. England was very angry: — not so much because Aus- 
tria, the ally of Germany, was increased in might, as because 
here the Treaty of Berlin (the triumph of British statesmen) 
was being torn up before her face. If great international 
compacts could be violated with impunity, what guarantee was 
there that some day British interests might not be most dire- 
fully affected? 

When the news of the seizure of Bosnia "came to King 
Edward VII at Balmoral, no one can forget how terribly he 
was upset. . . . The king was indignant. . . . His forecast 
of the danger which he communicated to me [Lord Redesdale] 
at the time showed him to be possessed of the prevision which 
marks the statesman. Every word he uttered that day has 
come true. ,; ' 

But it was soon evident that Austria intended to stand her 
ground. Behind her was Germany. The British foreign 
office fumed, but British public opinion was totally unwilling 
to risk a great war over an issue in which the immediate harm 
done to English interests was very slight. London therefore 
confined herself to protests and, seeing these were disregarded, 
presently put the best face on the matter possible. England 
did nothing more. 

III. Serbia, the home of the independent South Slavs, was 
quite willing to do a great deal : even to risk a life and death 
war. The Bosnians had been counted the blood brethren of 
the Serbs. At Belgrade there had been plenty of dreams 
and visions of a "Great Serbia" which should embrace Serbia 
proper, Montenegro, Bosnia and a large amount of Macedonian 
land still to be reclaimed from Turkey. Bosnia had been 
held by Austria, indeed, but her occupation had been 
technically "provisional " When she retired — as by the let- 
ter of the law she would some day do — it was unthinkable that 
Bosnia should relapse to Ottoman bondage. Serbia would 
surely then proceed to annex her own. Besides the Serbs 
were more conscious than ever of their grievous need of a 
seaport. In 1905-6 they had been subjected to the economic 

iLord Redesdale's "Memories": 1. 178-9. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 423 

friction and famous "Pig-war" with Austria, 1 which taught 
them that they could never amount to anything until they 
possessed a good outlet that was not in Austrian hands. Now 
all this hope was blighted, and Austria was also building a 
road for herself half-way across the Balkan peninsula, clearly 
aiming for the great haven of Saloniki, the seizure of which 
would render Serbia, even more than Bulgaria and Greece, 
her helpless vassal. In desperation and anger at the pros- 
pect Serbia was ready to rush to arms if only she had a little 
encouragement from her "great brother" Slavs at St, Peters- 
burg. 

IV. To Russia the seizure of Bosnia was hardly less un- 
welcome. Russia had just been defeated by Japan in the 
far East. She had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905. 
All her grandiose projects for forming a mighty empire on 
the Pacific had been thwarted. For that very reason there- 
fore she had been thrown back on her old hopes of a warm- 
water port on the Mediterranean and if possible of Constan- 
tinople itself. The pressure of Austria southward was a 
direct menace to those hopes : and besides, the Russian ruling 
classes, now that Bulgaria had disappointed them, had a 
strong sympathy for the Serbs, as fellow Slavs, struggling 
against Austrian pressure and entitled to the warmest kind 
of support from Muscovy. If Nicholas II had taken up arms 
in 1908 he would have been enthusiastically supported by at 
least a great fraction of his people. However, the moment it 
seemed possible that St. Petersburg would encourage the 
belligerency of Belgrade there came an ominous sword rattling 
from Berlin. "In melodramatic phrase the German emperor 

i The chief export of Serbia was pigs. In 1905, when the little king- 
dom tried to pursue an independent economic policy, Austria coerced 
her by a delightfully simple process. A few veterinary surgeons on 
the frontier inspected the Serbian swine, found them suffering from 
sundry maladies, and forbade their export across Austrian territories. 
The quarantine soon made the Serbs face commercial ruin and they ad- 
justed their financial policies according to the mandate of Vienna. A 
dozen veterinaries had accomplished more than three army corps! 
— The moment the economic treaty was signed, the learned veterinaries 
suddenly discovered that the Serbian swine were again quite healthy. 



424 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

announced that if his 'august ally' were compelled to draw the 
sword, a knight 'in shining armor' would be found at her 
side. " x In simpler words, Germany was avowedly ready to 
fight Russia as Austria's ally. 

The pill was bitter for the Czar but he had to accept it. 
His army was still demoralized after the disasters in Man- 
churia. The projected strategic railroads to the German 
frontiers had not been built. It was clear that England would 
not fight as an ally. It was even doubtful whether France 
would be an active ally, considering that the Teutonic powers 
were not making a direct attack upon either Serbia or Russia. 
There was nothing for Nicholas' expert advisers to do but to 
tell him that the case was virtually hopeless from a military 
standpoint, and that he must keep the peace. The czar most 
gloomily consented. Belgrade was informed that Russia 
could not fight for Serbia, and that Bosnia must be left to 
its fate. In anguish of soul the Serbs (March 31, 1909) sent 
a formal statement to Vienna that they would cease to pro- 
test about the annexation of their brethren and would "live 
in the future on good neighborly terms with Austria." 

So the llapsburgs and their Hohenzollern backers bore off 
the bloodless victory. Serbia and Russia once eliminated, it 
was easy to compound with the Turks. In April 1909 for 
about $11,000,000, and the recession of the small district 
euphoniously known as the "Sanjak of Novi-Bazar," the 
Ottomans agreed to waive their old claims to Bosnia. But 
it was a victory that caused very bitter feelings. It left 
many English statesmen irritated and regretful that their 
countrymen had not let them speak in sterner accents. It 
left Russia deeply humilated. The czar's prestige in the 
Balkans had suffered a deadly blow. Another such humilia- 
tion would almost have taken Russia off the list of great 
powers : and to avoid a second humiliation there were plenty 
of people at St. Petersburg and Moscow quite ready to say, 
"better a bloody and even a disastrous war." As for the 
feelings of Belgrade, they were indescribable. If Bosnia 
seemed for the moment lost, all the more reason for looking 

* Marriott, "The Eastern Question," p. 381. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TKEATY OF BERLIN 425 

on Austria as the implacable foe of the South Slavs, and for 
subordinating everything else to winning some other outlet 
upon blue water before she could hem Serbia in completely. 

Thus the annexation of Bosnia in 19 OS was a direct sowing 
of dragon 's teeth — but for the nonce in Vienna and in Berlin 
the Excellencies and generalissimos were very happy. The 
two Kaisers had rattled the Teutonic swords — and England 
and Russia had alike declined to light. 1 

This Bosnian menace to the world's peace faded however. 
Abdul Hamid was driven from his throne (see p. 287) : his 
army of 40,000 spies was sent about its business, and the 
Young Turks showed great zeal in all kinds of modernizing 
reforms. Liberal journals in France, England and America 
contained articles by well-meaning people extolling the new 
regime that was giving a new lease of life to the miscalled 
Sick Man of Europe. After a little, however, the Young 
Turks began to show their hand. Their sultan, Mohammed V, 
was indeed a puppet. The government was in the hands of 
the all-powerful "Committee of Union and Progress" which 
drafted the bills for the obsequious parliament and made 
and unmade ministers. Nevertheless, while the new regime 
was less mediaeval than the old rule by eunuchs, parasites and 
dancers, it was not more humane or more tolerant. The 
Young Turks recognized the serious difficulty of governing 
the Ottoman Empire — because of the great diversity of races, 
religious and legal systems, but they were totally incapable 
of hitting upon any scheme for enlightened tolerance whereby 
Turk, Kurd, Arab, Jew, Greek, Armenian and Syrian could 
even exist happily together on the principles of live and 
let live. They deliberately undertook to force all the non- 
Turkish races to become, in language, habits, laws and almost 
everything else, "Ottomans." The Christians were con- 
temptuously told they might for the present keep their re- 

i German support of Austria at this time was very shrewd. Besides 
putting Austria under a debt of gratitude, it taught the Young Turks 
that they were helpless without German support. England (with whom 
they had at first coquetted) was shown as unwilling to strike a blow to 
prevent Austria from putting through her program. 



426 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

ligion: in all other matters they must prepare to become 
Turks. Arab officers and sheiks (devout Mohammedans, of 
course) were also informed that they could get no govern- 
ment favor unless they showed zeal themselves for this 
"Turkification. " The empire, in short, was to be strength- 
ened and consolidated by a wholesale suppression of a thou- 
sand prejudices and customs in order to create a purely 
artificial uniformity. 

In many of their strait- jacket schemes no doubt Enver 
Bey and his associates had the model of Prussia before them : 
but they had only the Prussian ramrod discipline without 
the Prussian scientific intelligence and efficiency. The re- 
sults were, naturally, first, disorders, then revolts, then two 
very disastrous wars. In Asia Minor there were very serious 
massacres of Armenians, probably to teach that afflicted peo- 
ple the advantages of prompt submission. In Macedonia, the 
cockpit, of the races, Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians were per- 
secuted impartially — probably again to make them all live 
in happy harmony as "Turks." ''They treat us," said the 
Greek patriarch of Constantinople to an American visitor, 
"like dogs. Never under Abdul Hamid or any sultan have 
my people suffered as they are suffering now. But we are 
too strong for them. We refuse to be exterminated." 1 

The Young Turk policy was riding straight to some kind 
of a fall, unless the new leaders demonstrated that whatever 
else they had failed to accomplish, they had at least put 
fighting strength and scientifically trained energy into the 
Ottoman army. This, quickly enough, it was discovered that 
they had failed to do. The bubble of Turkish military prow- 
ess was pricked first by Italy, then by Albania, and finally 
by the new Balkan League. 

The news of the annexation of Bosnia had not been very 
pleasant reading at Rome. It meant that Austria was tight- 
ening her grip upon those Adriatic lands which ambitious 
Italians had not wished to go to Serbia because, to speak 
plainly, some day they might go to Italy. But the seizure 
of Bosnia showed also that Kaiser Wilhelm was quite willing 

i Gibbons, "The New Map of Europe,'' p. 189. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 427 

to permit his Turkish friends sometimes to be stripped of 
outlying dominions. He could not well object if Italy now 
walked in the footsteps of Austria. The Triple Alliance was 
becoming weak, but the Berlin leaders were not anxious de- 
liberately to wreck it. Now, therefore, with a suddenness 
that left little chance for palavers or protests, Italy struck a 
blow to seize Tripoli. 

Tripoli was the last relic of the old Turkish possessions in 
North Africa, for Egypt of course was really held by Eng- 
land. It was a strip of coast with some fairly fertile dis- 
tricts containing a few towns with a certain trade and be- 
ginnings of civilization, and then stretching away from the 
coast a land of palm oases, camel caravans, swarthy Moorish 
nomads and finally the parching Sahara desert: not a very 
desirable country but the last unpreempted piece of North 
Africa, and a region which by general consent had been re- 
served for Italian influence. In 1901, France had agreed 
to let Italy have a free hand in Tripoli, and at Algeciras 
in 1906 these Italian claims had been generally confirmed. 
However, it was understood that King Victor Emmanuel's 
government was content with "peaceful penetration," and 
as long as the Young Turks' regime let Italian economic in- 
terests alone, nothing seemed likely to happen. But now 
the new "Turkifying" process was applied to Tripoli also, 
to the great detriment of many Italian claims and interests. 
At Rome again there was grave distrust as to whether their 
"beloved allies" at Berlin might not develop some day the 
same interest in Tripoli they had shown in Morocco. In 
any case on September 27, 1911, the Italian ambassador at 
Constantinople suddenly presented a demand on the sultan, 
that within forty-eight hours he consent to an Italian occu- 
pation of Tripoli, "under the sovereignty of the Sultan and 
subject to the payment of an annual tribute." 

One need not praise the moderation of this document. The 
Italian statesmen doubtless had studied the life of Bismarck, 
and the more recent example of how Austria had suddenly 
demolished the Berlin Treaty without squeamishness or 
apology. Italy wanted Tripoli. She could legitimately al- 



428 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

lege various infringements on the rights of her subjects. She 
was pretty sure she could get the country without precipitat- 
ing a general war. Therefore she went straight ahead. The 
Young Turks tried to make a mollifying reply. It was 
bluntly rejected, and on September 29, 1911, Italy declared 
war on the sultan. The whole thing had been done so quickly 
that the neutral diplomats had simply lost their breath. Now 
they could do nothing but try to localize the war. 

Italy promised not to do anything to upset the Balkan 
situation. This reassured Germany and Austria. With her 
superior navy Italy could make it virtually impossible for 
the Turks to reenforce their garrisons in this isolated prov- 
ince. 1 In one sense therefore the case of the Young Turks 
was hopeless, but with courage if not with wisdom they de- 
termined to make a hard struggle to save their last African 
dominions. Army officers in civilian disguise smuggled them- 
selves across Egypt to Tripoli, and there were some attempts 
at blockade-running to get munitions to the hard-pressed 
garrisons. The case, however, was desperate from the Otto- 
man standpoint unless some great power undertook to thwart 
Italy, but despite the scoldings of the Berlin and Vienna 
press, no Christian nation stirred. The Turks were left to 
their fate. 

The Turko-Italian War has few dramatic chapters. On 
September 30th, Italian battleships bombarded the town of 
Tripoli and in a few days silenced the decrepit forts and 
landed a force to hold the city. On the 8th of October, the 
coast town of Derna surrendered. On the 19th, Benghazi 
fell. After that it was simply a case of ferrying across a 
large Italian army to hold these towns and gradually to 
conquer the interior. The Turks fell back into the hinter- 
land and rallied the Moorish tribes by telling them that their 
religion was at stake, and sometimes they pressed the Italians 
hard with raids, sudden attacks and guerrilla warfare. The 
invaders slowly wore down this resistance and began to sub- 

i Service in Tripoli had been hated by Turkish officers. It had been 
a kind of punishment and exile to be detailed to serve in the garrisons 
there. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 429 

due the oases. But although Turkey could do nothing really 
to save the province, she stubbornly refused to make peace 
by ceding the same. Things became very awkward for King 
Victor Emmanuel's government. It was forbidden by Aus- 
tria Mo make any attack upon the Ottoman possessions in the 
Adriatic, the war was very expensive, and the Young Turks, 
knowing that little could happen to them beyond the loss of 
Tripoli (lost anyway !) were in no mood to make peace. 

Finally, in the face of north European displeasure, the 
Italians began to strike their foe nearer home. Italian war- 
ships bombarded Beyrut in Syria and exchanged shots with 
the Dardanelles forts, and at last the Rome government seized 
Rhodes and sundry other small islands in the iEgean. This 
at length produced the desired effect. The neutral powers 
grew anxious and began urging "peace" at Constantinople. 
There were signs of revolt also in Albania and a clear rumor 
of an impending Balkan war. In June, 1912, Turkish and 
Italian diplomats began parleying in Switzerland. The 
Orientals held out stubbornly all summer, but in the autumn 
the Balkan situation was such that the Turks yielded. They 
agreed to withdraw their forces from Tripoli. Nothing was 
said about Italian annexation, but it was plain enough the 
Italians would stay if the Ottomans went. The islands around 
Rhodes were to be held until the Italians were satisfied the 
Turks had executed their part of the bargain. 2 This treaty 
of Lausanne then, signed October 15, 1912, registered a suc- 
cessful act of the sword. One more member had been ampu- 

iThe anomalous relations of Italy and Austria were well illustrated 
by a cartoon in a German comic paper of this time, representing an 
Austrian general at military maneuvers opening the envelope containing 
his orders. "Problem: An army of our dear Italian allies is ad- 
vancing on Trieste, another corps of our beloved comrades-in-arms is 
threatening Trent. Required: Utterly to rout and repulse our ad- 
mirable brothers-in-a-common-cause, and drive them headlong back upon 
Verona." 

2 The Italians still retained these ^Egean islands at the time this 
chapter was written. Soon after the end of this war the Balkan 
War broke out, and then the Turks did not press for the restoration of 
the islands, realizing that Greece was likely to seize them if the Italians 
departed. 



430 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

tated from the body politic which the Young Turks were try- 
ing to revivify. 

The Italian war had come upon the Young Turks like a 
cloud from a clear sky. They had had little warning of 
their danger. Not so with their troubles in Albania. That 
country was so close to Saloniki, their old headquarters, that 
they should have understood clearly that in trying to "Ot- 
tomanize" the Albanian uplands they were playing with fire. 
Yet this thing was precisely what they attempted. They en- 
deavored to introduce into that untamed hill-country the full 
regime of taxation, army conscription and a unified legal 
system which they were inflicting simultaneously on Arabs, 
Kurds and Armenians. The answer was a violent revolt in 
the spring of 1912, which the Constantinople government was 
unable to quell. Worse still, in June, 1912, the Turkish gar- 
rison at Monastir made common cause with the insurgents 
and demanded the overthrow of the Young Turk ministry. 
All over Macedonia and Albania there were skirmishes, out- 
rages and sudden death, which Mohanimed V's administrators 
seemed powerless to terminate. The result of this was not 
merely ominous for the future stability of the Young Turkish 
regime, but it gave admirable opportunity for the Christian 
Balkan nations to strike with every possible advantage. They 
used the opportunity. 

The "Macedonian problem' ' had been the greatest single 
question left over from the inadequate and unsatisfactory 
Berlin " settlement." Into this unlucky territory, wedged be- 
tween Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Thrace, with 
the great city of Saloniki giving an admirable frontage upon 
the sea, had been thrust sections of practically all the peoples 
of the Balkan peninsula. "Macedonia," wrote an Italian, 
"has for two thousand years oeen the dumping ground of 
different peoples and forms, indeed, a perfect ethnographic 
museum. ' ' 

Naturally the regions nearest Greece had contained many 
Greeks, those nearest Bulgaria many Bulgars, etc., but unfor- 
tunately Serb, Greek, Bulgar, Turkish and often even 
Roumanian villages were scattered all over the picturesque 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 431 

hill country without it being possible to advance the boundar- 
ies of any of the neighboring states, unless by the inclusion 
of many Christian communities alien to the conqueror and 
Christians that might prefer the old Turkish master, for in- 
stance, to a new Serbian one. At Saloniki there was a huge 
colony of Jews. Austria had set her eyes upon the country 
— its absorption was for her the next logical step after the 
annexation of Bosnia: but this ambition was of course jeal- 
ously checked by St. Petersburg. Nearer at hand Greeks, 
Serbs and Bulgars alike maintained an unofficial propaganda 
among the people of their race and faith, endeavoring, nomi- 
nally by "educational" and "religious" enterprises, to make 
the land just as thoroughly theirs as possible, against the time 
when the Turk should depart and the ablest claimant come to 
his own. These three species of Christians hated one another, 
sometimes, it seemed, more than they did the infidel oppressor. 
Raids, feuds of village against village, wholesale banditage, 
abduction of travellers for ransom, 1 and downright massacres 
of whole communities made Macedonia a land of romance and 
bloody anarchy. The European powers had addressed num- 
erous remonstrances to Constantinople on the subject, and 
received rather more than the usual number of promises to 
"reform." There were even half-hearted attempts toward 
establishing a financial control and a gendarmerie under 
western direction. But to the only solution that would really 
have profited — namely, the setting up of Macedonia as an 
autonomous province under a Christian governor — the Turks, 
"Old" or "Young," would never consent. Therefore they 
frittered away their last opportunities. In 1912, with an 
amazing suddenness they lost Macedonia outright. 

It had been an axiom of the diplomats, oriental and west- 
ern, that the Christian Balkan states hated one another far too 
cordially ever to unite for any common purpose. Serbs hated 
Bulgars, Greeks hated Bulgars, and Bulgars hated impartially 
Greeks and Serbs. 2 On this reciprocal hate Turks, Austrians, 

i Thus not long before the end of Turkish rule an American woman, 
a missionary, was carried off for purposes of extortion. 

2 In 1902, when in Athens, I recall noticing very many troops drilling, 



432 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and Germans had implicitly counted. But recent events were 
working a miracle. The Balkan nations were coming to real- 
ize their grievous physical limitations: that their boundaries 
were not to be expanded by brave hopes, fiery oratory and 
patriotic pamphlets : and that to win even part of the coveted 
lands of the Turks was a major military undertaking. A 
number of things also conjoined in 1912 to make Serbia, 
Bulgaria and Greece simultaneously willing to drop their 
feuds and fight in a common cause. 

I. The success of Austria in annexing Bosnia had put fear 
in Bulgaria and Greece as well as in Serbia that she was 
next about to seize Macedonia and ruin them all three. What 
must be done must therefore be done quickly. 

II. The success of the Albanians in resisting the Turks 
was showing that the Turkish army was not everything it 
was claimed to be. A well-conceived attack upon the Sultan 
did not seem hopeless. Besides the Albanian revolt was likely 
to give Austria a good pretext for intervening in the south — 
another reason for haste. 

III. The Italian attack on Tripoli was demonstrating that 
the great powers were very unwilling to take drastic action 
to prevent small-scale local wars, lest they precipitate a 
world war. This circumstance of course made the Balkan 
Christians bolder. 

IV. The gross outrages committed by the Turks and Alban- 
ians (during their own disorders) upon the Christian popula- 
tion in Macedonia filled the neighboring kingdoms with fury. 
They all, and especially Bulgaria, grew more ready to for- 
get old grudges and to unite in a common effort against the 
Moslem oppressor. 

V. It is a very reasonable inference that Russian diplomacy, 
although nominally urging peace, was entirely willing to 
have something happen that would kill abruptly the well- 
known Austrian schemes for Macedonia. The humiliation in 
1908 over Bosnia had not been forgotten at St. Petersburg: 

and asking a Greek friend if these men expected to fight the Turks. 
"Not Turks but Bulgars," was the reply: "all Greeks consider them 
our coming enemies. ,, 



TEAKING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 433 

and the fact that the Muscovite agents had smiled in the days 
following, did not prove that their counsels had always been 
pacific. 

Nevertheless the formation of a firm Balkan confederacy 
for a joint attack upon the Turks seemed so improbable that 
up to the very last German and Austrian diplomats, friendly 
to Ottoman interests, refused to become excited. True, it was 
known that Serbia and Bulgaria had reached an alliance 
(March 13, 1912), and that a little later there was a Greco- 
Bulgarian treaty (May 10, 1912) : followed still later by pacts 
binding Greece to Serbia, and little Montenegro to her three 
greater Balkan companions. 1 It is not quite clear to whom 
the main credit for organizing this military confederacy is 
due. Probably a large part should be assigned to M. Gue- 
shoff, prime minister of Bulgaria, and to M. Milanovanic, 
prime minister of Serbia: but common report gives a great 
share of the glory to M. Venizelos, the astute and statesmanly 
prime minister of King George of Greece. On August 26, 
1912, the final convention was signed. Bulgaria agreed with 
the other powers that if Turkey did not consent to certain 
demands, war should be declared on the Sultan in October. 

In September the four "allies" made a formal appeal to 
the great powers to join with them in requiring Turkey to 
institute very drastic reforms in Macedonia — especially a 
Christian governor, a local legislature and a militia recruited 
exclusively inside the province. Now at last their Excellencies 
the ambassadors at Constantinople began to write out long 
telegrams to wire to their chancellories, and the newspapers in 
the great capitals to issue special editions. The impossible 
seemed about to be accomplished. The four Balkan states had 
forgotten their enmities and were girding for a common war. 

The exhortations of "peace, peace" from London, Paris, 
Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg fell on wholly deafened 
ears. The promises that the Powers would presently get re- 
forms for Macedonia, if only her free neighbors would sit 

i Montenegro, throughout, loyally stuck by Serbia. The hope of 
these two branches of the South Slavs was to effect some kind of a 
union on terms honorable to both. 



434 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

quiet, touched a familiar but unresponsive chord. The Turks 
on their part acted with an arrogance which made hard the 
lot of the peace-makers. They began mobilizing a large army 
"for manoeuvres " near Adrianople, convenient for a stroke 
against Bulgaria, and when the Balkan states answered with 
a counter mobilization, they seized all the Greek merchant- 
ships at Constantinople. The grand vizier and his colleagues 
gave little hope of any real changes in Macedonia. Mani- 
festly the whole region was headed straight towards con- 
flict, but the western chancellories with pompous pride made 
one last formal effort to order away the war god. On the 
morning of October 8th, 1912, the Austrian and Russian 
ministers (acting for the other four great Powers) handed 
in at each of the Balkan courts a solemn warning that, while 
the Powers would take in hand most seriously the better 
ordering of Macedonia, if, despite their wishes, "war did 
break out, they (the Powers) would not admit at the end of 
a conflict any modification of the territorial status quo in 
European Turkey." 

Very possibly the shoulders of the Russian ministers 
shrugged when these communiques were delivered. They 
could at least tell their Austrian colleagues that they had 
done everything in their power to avert a war very unwel- 
come at Vienna. The direct reward of these peace-makers 
surely was not large ! Probably they merely helped to 
precipitate the war. One hour after the delivery of this 
note the Montenegrin charge was asking for his passports 
at Constantinople — as if the Balkan kingdoms had wished 
to indicate their contempt for the Sultan by having his 
smallest enemy be the first to declare war. There were still 
a few more demands and refusals passed between the other 
Balkan kingdoms and Constantinople, but nothing now could 
avert a conflict. The great Powers looked on helplessly. The 
Montenegrin charge, on his way home to Cettinje, said 
bluntly at Bucharest, "Montenegro wants territorial increase 
and will not give back whatever conquests she makes. We 
do not fear to cross the will of the great powers, for they do 
not worry us." These were grim, raw sentiments worthy of 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 435 

a Bernhardt Balkan diplomacy certainly was more honest 
than much of that imported from the west. The only way to 
argue with it was at the cannon 's mouth. 

So the "Concert of Europe" saw itself flouted. Never- 
theless, the high diplomats refused to get excited as they 
smoked twisted Russian cigars and read the dispatches. The 
consensus of military opinion, especially in Teutonic lands, 
was that the Turkish army excelled infinitely the ill-organized 
confederate forces that could be led against it. The Otto- 
man army had been organized by the great Prussian general 
Von der Goltz and a corps of fellow-experts. Its artillery 
was from the Krupp works at Essen. The excellent fight- 
ing quality of the Turkish rank and file was justly extolled. 
On the other hand, the Serbs and Greeks were treated as 
lacking alike organization and valor. The Bulgars were a 
little better, but they were heavily outnumbered and their 
artillery was French. The Young Turkish regime had been 
of course unable to fight the Italians because it lacked a good 
navy, but now it would assert its full might. The Vienna and 
Berlin war offices looked forward to the results with some 
complacency. 1 The only fear was that the Turks might 
prove so completely victorious there would be some trouble 
to restrain them before they committed "atrocities" which 
would revolt queasy stomachs in France, Russia and England. 

On the 18th of October, 1912, all sides had completed 
mobilization and fighting began. The Montenegrins at- 
tacked and besieged Scutari, the strong fortress close to their 
frontier. The Serbs struck southward towards Uskub in 
Macedonia, intending to get ultimately in touch with the 

i The Young Turks, after a hesitant interval following the deposition 
of Abdul Hamid, had fallen as completely under German influence 
as their deposed master. The accomplishment of this was a triumph for 
Berlin diplomacy, but the details of the achievement of this success are 
still a closed book. The English diplomatic service unquestionably 
missed a great opportunity when it failed to get on intimate terms with 
the Young Turks soon after they seized power. It is claimed Great 
Britain changed ambassadors at this time and that it was some years 
before the new envoy correctly grasped the situation. Meanwhile the 
new Ottoman leaders had been captured by Germany. 



436 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Greeks who were fighting their way northward from Thessaly 
to Saloniki. The Bulgars, who had the most serious task, 
flung themselves straight into Thrace, headed for Adrianople 
and Constantinople. The war thus had four distinct theaters. 
The Bulgars had about 300,000 men in action : * the Serbs and 
Greeks about 150,000 each: the Montenegrins about 50,000. 
The Turks theoretically should have assembled far more 
than 500,000. As a matter of fact, they probably never sent 
400,000 men into action. Almost immediately, the discrep- 
ancy between their boastful confidence and the hard facts of 
the case were patent to the world. As M. Gueshoff, the Bul- 
garian premier, wrote with exultation: *'A miracle took 
place. . . . Within a brief space of one month the Balkan 
alliance demolished the Ottoman empire; four tin}' countries 
with the population of some 10,000.000 souls defeating a great 
power whose inhabitants numbered 25,000.000." 

For a few weeks the Christian races of the Balkans forgot 
their miserable jealousies with their neighbors. In the spirit 
of true Crusaders they turned unitedly upon the infidel enemy 
that had oppressed them all so long. Christian fanaticism 
struck Moslem fanaticism as in the days of Godfrey of 
Bouillon — and the Christian prevailed. 

The Turkish mobilization scheme (devised as it had been 
by Prussian experts) worked on the whole excellently: a 
very large army of conscripts and reservists was sent over 
from Asia Minor into Thrace. But from the outset the Turks 
were handicapped in their communications. They could send 
no reinforcements by water to Saloniki or elsewhere, for the 
Qreek navy was in control of the iEgean, 2 and this threw 
them back upon their miserable roads and wholly inadequate 
railroads. Their first line troops (nizams), to the number 

i Bulgaria mobilized so great a fraction of her male population at 
the outset of the war that in Sofia all the newspapers suspended for 
lack of printers, and the electric cars for lack of motor-men. 

2 There was only one large armored cruiser in the Greek navy, but 
this was admirably manned, giving the Hellenes an incalculable advan- 
tage over foes who did not possess a single warship that was com- 
petently handled. The Greeks had also a number of excellent smaller 
craft. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 437 

of about 80,000, were fairly well officered, equipped and dis- 
ciplined: but the reservists (redifs) lacked shoes, tents, 
blankets, almost everything in short but rifles, and there were 
hardly any competent officers to lead them. As for the com- 
missariat, it absolutely broke down. No proper arrangements 
had been made to feed a vast host. Most of the troops were 
gaunt and weak with starvation when they went into battle. 
And yet such was the arrogance of the Turkish commanders 
that they packed their dress uniforms in their baggage-kits 
in order that they might make a fine appearance when they 
rode into conquered Sofia! 

In less time than it took Moltke to prick the bubble of the 
French Second Empire in 1870, the Balkan allies displayed 
the absurdity of the Turkish boasts. War practically began 
October 18th, 1912. On the 19th the Bulgars were hemming 
in Adrianople. On the 20th, there was outpost fighting with 
the main Turkish army. On the 23rd, the Bulgars under 
General Dimitrieff struck the Turkish hosts near Kirk Kilisse 
in Thrace. Position after position the raging Christians 
stormed with the bayonet. As night came on the Turks fled 
the field in panic-stricken rout. The victory was so com- 
plete the Bulgars did not realize their success soon enough 
to make proper pursuit. 

Their next move was to leave an army to invest Adrianople 
and with their remaining hosts to head straight for Constan- 
tinople. On October 28th began the battle of Lule Burgas 
with about 175,000 men on each side. There had been very 
few struggles like it, prior to 1914. The Turks fought better 
this time. For two days they flung back nearly every at- 
tack, fighting like the sons of the terrible Ottomans who had 
once menaced all Europe. But the French-made artillery 
of the Bulgars at last got in its deadly work. The Turkish 
soldiers were starving and had lost their strength to make 
counter-charges. At last on the 31st their right wing gave 
way and by the next morning the whole great army of the 
sultan was fleeing in a rabble from the field of disaster: artil- 
erymen forsaking cannon to ride off on the horses: infantry- 
men dropping rifles that they might run the faster. The 



438 THE KOOTS OF THE WAR 

flight ceased not until the Turks were behind the Tchatalja 
forts just beyond which lay Constantinople. It was a mighty 
victory. 

Had the Bulgars possessed a reserve of cavalry to hurry 
the pursuit, they might have entered Constantinople on the 
heels of the fugitives. As it was, they were themselves al- 
most spent by their exertions. "When at last on the 17th of 
November they came up to the ''Tchatalja Hues," which ex- 
tended from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea across the 
peninsula where the capital lies, they found that the Turks 
had rallied, mounted heavy cannon and used sundry old iron- 
clads as floating batteries to cover either flank of their forti- 
fications. The Bulgars attacked on the 17th and the 18th, 
and sustained repulses and losses. Then they suddenly dis- 
continued their attacks. There is still uncertainty why Gen- 
eral Savoff, their commander, did not press the case home. 
Was he discouraged at the first repulses, was he short of am- 
munition, was he fearful of the cholera in the city, did he 
dread lest the great powers never permit Bulgaria to enjoy 
the fruits of so fair a conquest? Or was his government 
more anxious now about its allies, the Greeks and Serbs, than 
about its foe the Turks? Certain it is only that Savoff did 
not renew his main attack, and that on December 3rd an 
armistice was signed, preliminary to peace negotiations. Lule 
Burgas had been only the center of the Turkish tragedy. 
Victory had come also to the Greeks and to the Serbs. 

The Turkish armies in Macedonia and Albania had been 
weaker than those in Thrace, but on paper they were formid- 
able forces. They were, however, no better commanded or 
organized than their companions near the capital. When 
the Serbs struck southward to take Uskub in Macedonia there 
was a fierce battle at Kumanova, but it ended in the ignomini- 
ous defeat of Zekki Pasha who had tried to bar the invaders' 
way. The Turks fled towards Monastir. The Serbs were 
hot after them. Monastir surrendered on November 18th, 
and 40,000 Turks became Serbian prisoners. It was another 
Lule Burgas. 

The Greeks had remembered with shame their defeats in 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 439 

1897. Since then they had been disciplined by skillful French 
officers : and now the Turks could hardly recognize their once 
inefficient foes. At Yanitza (November 3rd) they won a 
locally decisive battle over Tahsin Pasha and opened the way 
to Saloniki — their heart's desire. The courage oozed out of 
the Ottoman officers holding the city. They had still 30,000 
men and plenty of munitions, but they knew things were go- 
ing miserably in Thrace: the Serbs were coming down, and 
there was no relief in sight. On November 9th they surren- 
dered abjectly to the Greek Crown Prince Constantine — and 
so ended their grip on a city which they had possessed be- 
fore they took Constantinople. 

Meantime the Greek fleet was busy in the iEgean islands. 
With their inefficient warships cowering behind the Dar- 
danelles forts, the Turks could do nothing to relieve Lesbos, 
which yielded in November, or Chios, which held out until 
January. Samos expelled the Turks by a local uprising. 
The lesser islands were easily taken. The Turkish flag soon 
floated nowhere by the iEgean save from the forts on the 
Asiatic mainland. 

The ' 'impossible" of the Teutonic military men had hap- 
pened. Turkey had been utterly beaten. Nowhere in Eu- 
rope did Mohammed V keep his hold, save on Constantinople 
itself, the Dardanelles forts and the three isolated and be- 
sieged fortresses of Adrian ople, Janina and Scutari, the last 
two in far Albania. To ask for an armistice and to send 
delegates to a peace conference in London was something the 
haughty Ottomans dared not court destruction to avoid. It 
was clear enough now that the Great Powers had not the 
slightest intention of forcing the Balkan Allies to disgorge 
their conquests. England and France were watching the 
situation with complacency. The Russian bear was hardly 
concealing his grin. Even the Teutonic powers and Italy 
were not prepared to interfere for the Turk, provided a proper 
arrangement was made about Albania. Therefore in Decem- 
ber the peace conferences began in London, the Turks offer- 
ing haggling small concessions : their foes requiring that they 
should practically retire from Europe save for a narrow strip 



440 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

in Thrace between Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The 
sultan's situation was desperate; the treasury empty, the 
army virtually starving, and at length the more reasonable 
Ottoman ministers decided to accept the offered terms, griev- 
ous as they were. But the Young Turk leaders, especially 
Enver Bey, were enraged at the idea of throwing up the tight 
without one more effort to save a better remnant of the once 
great Mohammedan dominion in Europe. Their methods 
were on the standard Levantine model. Nizam Pasha, the 
leading "peace" minister, was shot dead. The weak Mo- 
hammed V was then induced to make up a new Cabinet of 
fire-eaters. The peace conferences ceased and the war was 
begun again. 

Enver Bey, however, found it impossible to put life into a 
corpse by brave speeches. The fighting spirit of the Turkish 
army was dead. The Bulgars were still camped at the very 
outskirts of Constantinople and could not be dislodged. The 
three isolated fortresses, Janina, Adrianople and Scutari were, 
one by one, starved out. On April 22nd, 1913, the last-named 
fortress, the longest to resist, surrendered to the Monte- 
negrins, who had devoted practically their entire energies 
through the war to the investment of the stronghold. Al- 
ready, chastened by new adversity, the Turkish envoys had 
resumed their conferences with the Balkan delegates. On 
May 1, 1913, the Treaty of London was signed. The sultan 
ceded Crete to Greece, leaving the other ^Egean islands "to 
the decision of the great powers" (i. e. practically all of them 
to Greece), and he ceded also to his foes all his dominions in 
Europe beyond the "Enos-Midia" line west of Constantinople. 

The Turk had been almost expelled from Europe. The four 
Balkan allies had won a simply astonishing victory. If they 
were able to make moderate use of the same, if they avoided 
dissensions among themselves and the western powers played 
them fair, their triumph meant nothing but good for the 
world. The Sick Man of Europe had been nearly relegated 
to Asia where alone he belonged. The Macedonian problem 
seemed settled. Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 441 

had all received extensions of boundary which they sorely 
needed. The Balkan War had appeared to justify itself by 
promising blessings to mankind. 

This happiness was not to be. Long before the final treaty 
of London, there had been all too many tokens that the 
Balkan allies were sorely divided among themselves. These 
dissensions had been partly suppressed so long as the war with 
Turkey lasted; but the instant this pressure was removed 
a situation was disclosed which was very ugly, promising 
not peace but a second war. And this second war was being 
encouraged by the attitude of a great Christian power, Aus- 
tria. 

In one sense the allies had been the victims of the very 
magnitude of their victory. They had hoped to win a few 
square miles apiece and to force a Christian governor on 
Macedonia after a hard wavering war. And lo, they had al- 
most exterminated Turkey in Europe ! But they did not find 
themselves at liberty after their victory to distribute their 
spoils according to the division compacts which they had 
made before commencing the joint campaign. Now, one of 
the prime objects of the war had been to get some kind of a 
fair outlet for Serbia, preferably upon salt water. The 
Serbs soon after their first successes had struck into Albania, 
forced their way over the mountains, and for a few proud, 
hopeful days their flag had floated at Durazzo beside the blue 
Adriatic. But Austria instantly showed her hand, and Aus- 
tria was naturally supported by Germany, and by Italy also 
— which had its own ambitions in Adriatic countries. Serbia 
must not extend her sway over Albania, otherwise a clear 
belt of South Slav country would be drawn from the Danube 
to the Adriatic to the vast detriment of all Austria's darling 
schemes for expansion. As a corollary to this policy, Monte- 
negro was to be forced to relinquish Scutari, an Albanian for- 
tress, on which she had set her heart and done everything to 
win. Since the Turks were now gone, an independent ' ' prin- 
cipality of Albania ' ' was to be set up under the protection of 
the powers, who were to provide it with a respectable sover- 



442 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

eign and to aid him to get started as the head of a quasi- 
civilized state. 1 This arrangement was of course outwardly 
satisfactory to the Albanians who detested their Serbian 
neighbors, but the real author and finisher of this newly 
created "state" was obviously Austria, whose politicians were 
in acute anxiety at the threatened growth in power of the 
once despised South Slavs. 

It was evident enough that the whole Triple Alliance was 
opposed to any serious control of Albania by the Serbs or 
Montenegrins. England and France were not anxious to 
fight over the question. Russia, once more isolated, gave way 
before the Teutons. In great bitterness of spirit the for- 
saken Serbs evacuated Albania, and the Montenegrins 
marched out of their gallantly won Scutari. Naturally both 
of these ambitious little countries looked for recompense else- 
where. 

The situation therefore was as follows. Bulgaria had seized 
most of Thrace and by its location neither Greece nor Serbia 
could have that territory. But the Bulgars were also in- 
tensely interested in getting a great part of Macedonia. 
Here were the "unredeemed" lands of their people, and it 
was primarily for them that King Ferdinand's armies had 
rushed to war. By the compacts made before the struggle 
began, Bulgaria was certainly to be given a great extension 
in Macedonia. Serbia and Greece could not deny this letter 
of the bond. But they could argue with much moral em- 
phasis that conditions had utterly changed. They had ex- 
pected (Greece indeed less than Serbia) to get their reward 
in Albania. From Albania they had been excluded by the 
fiat of the great powers. Was it just that with Serbia denied 

i The Powers elected as prince of Albania, William of Wied. One of 
the prime qualifications of this titled gentleman was that he was a 
Protestant, and so could hold the scales impartially for the Moslems, 
Catholics and Greek Orthodox that made up his subjects, with never a 
single Protestant among them! The prince was only perfunctorily 
obeyed by the lawless hill tribes, during his year of troubled and very 
nominal "power," and in 1914, soon after the outbreak of the Great 
War, was fain to abdicate and go home to Germany. Albania lapsed 
at once to her unspoiled barbarism. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 443 

nearly all her expected gains, and Greece also a part of them, 1 
Bulgaria should continue to exact her pound of flesh in Mace- 
donia? The net result of that would' have been to give Bul- 
garia most of both Thrace and Macedonia and her allies 
very little new land anywhere. Obviously here was a case 
very ticklish to be handled by the "grim, raw" methods of 
Balkan diplomacy. 

Had the Balkan kingdoms been let alone to adjust the 
problem they might have worked it out peaceably, albeit their 
case was difficult. The Bulgars were swelled with pride at 
their victories over the main Turkish armies. They treated 
their allies with insulting condescension. Their officers were 
swaggeringly confident that in a new war they could teach 
Serbs and Greeks simultaneously which race was the true 
master of the Balkans. They had already quarreled with 
the Greeks over the possession of Saloniki, insisting on thrust- 
ing in a garrison there to share control of the city, although 
the Greeks had won the place unaided. As early as April, 
1913, the "allies" were grievously at loggerheads. As soon 
as the Treaty of London was signed they let their feuds be 
seen more clearly. On May 28th Serbia demanded that Bul- 
garia should revise the treaty of partition in view of the 
creation of an autonomous Albania. On June 8th the case 
had gone so far that the Russian czar issued a solemn appeal 
to the kings of Bulgaria and Serbia begging them not to 
"dim the glory they had earned in common by a fratricidal 
war," offering himself as a friendly and impartial arbiter, 
and warning them "that the State which begins war will be 
held responsible before the cause of Slavdom" and that he 
reserved "all liberty as to the attitude which Russia will 
adopt in regard to the results of such a criminal struggle." 

Nicholas II and his advisers were honestly, this time at 
least, on the side of peace. The Russian secret service would 
have grievously failed in its duty had it been unable to in- 
form St. Petersburg whence came the chief pressure on the 
Bulgars to draw the sword, — in short, to expel the Serbs from 

i The Greeks had had j^reat projects for large annexations in South- 
ern Albania: of course they would also in any case gain many islands. 



444 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Macedonia and the Greeks from Saloniki while of course re- 
taining themselves a firm clutch on Thrace. The favorable 
prophets of war were now r manifestly in Vienna and in Berlin. 

To break up the Balkan League had seemed indispensable 
to Teutonic diplomacy. Were the four allies to compose this 
feud, and to distribute their conquests amicably, the next 
step would be to organize something like a permanent Balkan 
federation, — "Balkania, " as certain newspapers were al- 
ready hopefully calling it. Such a federation would have 
been a formidable military power. It would promptly have 
taken advantage of the next display of weakness in Turkey 
to push new annexations. Being "Orthodox" and partially 
Slavic it would have been peculiarly friendly to Russia. It 
would have lain like a stone wall across that road to the east 
which was always part of the Pan-Germanic schemes. In 
short, to Austria and Germany alike this Balkan confedera- 
tion spelled nothing but calamity. 

Under these circumstances the politicians of the school of 
Bismarck felt themselves well justified in desperate expedi- 
ents. "Bulgaria's exasperation was Germany's opportunity. 
To fan the fires of Bulgarian jealousy against her allies was 
not difficult, but Germany spared no effort in the performance 
of this sinister task. ' ' x The Greeks and Serbs were quite 
aware of the intrigues, and drew together in the face of a 
common danger. On June 2nd, they concluded an alliance 
against any Bulgarian attack. All through that month, de- 
spite the czar's fervent appeal, the situation continued dark 
and lowering. Serbia accepted the Russian offer of arbitra- 
tion. Bulgaria did not refuse it flatly, but made so many 
conditions and delays that it was little more than declination. 
Meanwhile Vienna and Berlin were watching the situation 
with ill-concealed glee. Gueshoff, the Bulgar prime minister, 
a sincere lover of peace, found himself being overborne by 

i Marriott, "The Eastern Question," p. 408. To stir up wars that 
might be of advantage to Germany has been of course an accepted 
expedient in Hohenzollern diplomacy: e.g. the famous "Zimmermann 
note" to Mexico in January, 1917, with its effort to embroil America 
with Mexico and Japan. 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 445 

the violent pro-war militarist party which, backed by German 
influence, had gained the ear of King Ferdinand and was 
heading straight towards bloodshed. In disgust Gueshoff re- 
signed and in his place came Daneff, a violent advocate of 
" action." Under these dark circumstances it is rather re- 
markable that war did not begin sooner. The great powers 
again looked on helplessly. At Austro-German instigation 
they had agreed on a policy of "disinterestedness" and non- 
intervention, no matter which side won. This seemed very 
satisfactory to the Teutons, because their experts had this 
time selected Bulgaria as the certain winner. 

On the evening of June 29, 1913, however, war had not 
broken out. At a certain boundary-point Bulgarian and 
Serbian outposts were cooking their suppers and fraternizing 
amicably, but that same night, without the slightest warning, 
the Bulgar general, Savoff, ordered a general attack along the 
whole Greek and Serbian lines. It was a cold-blooded piece 
of deviltry, devised by King Ferdinand's general staff, and 
ordered (so M. Gueshoff afterwards confessed) without the 
knowledge of his late colleagues in the civil cabinet. Savoff 
and his lieutenants were confident that by one crude, faith- 
less blow they could break the power of both of their enemies 
at once. Never were men more egregiously self-deceived. The 
brief "Second Balkan War" which followed was terrible for 
its ferocity. All the old race hatreds of the afflicted peninsula 
were traded out. Each side charged the other with gross 
cruelties, and with massacres of the civil population of Mace- 
donia: and both sides were probably right. In any case, 
however, the struggle was mercifully brief. On the 29th of 
June it began: on the 30th of July came the concluding 
armistice. Bulgaria had been utterly and dramatically de- 
feated. 

The Serbs and Greeks had alike been infuriated by the 
suggestion that they had not done their full share against the 
Turks. Their exasperation with their obstreperous "allies" 
was unspeakable. Each little nation flung itself into the new 
struggle with explosive energy. 1 The Serbs fought to avenge 

i Montenegro gave loyal help to Serbia. 



446 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Slivnitza : the Greeks to show that they did not owe Saloniki 
to any borrowed valor. From July 2nd to July 6th, Greeks 
and Bulgars wrestled in a hideously bloody battle near the 
Vardar. Then the Bulgars broke and retreated hastily. The 
Greeks pursued and when the final armistice came had forced 
their way over the mountains and were penetrating Bulgaria. 
The Serbs in turn showed themselves anything but comic- 
opera fighters. Rallying from the first treacherous attack 
they fought back steadily, and by the 8th of July they had 
their enemy hopelessly on the defensive. 

So Bulgaria stood in a parlous way had the war been pro- 
longed, but fortunately for humanity 's sake it was not. Like 
an apparition from the north there suddenly intervened 
Roumania. 

That country had remained steadily neutral during the first 
war, although urging on Bulgaria a rectification of her very 
unsatisfactory frontier in the Dobrudja, as "compensation" 
for the great increase in power which King Ferdinand's peo- 
ple were getting at the expense of Turkey. With ill-grace 
Bulgaria had agreed in April to make a very small and (to 
Roumania) inadequate concession. King Carol's govern- 
ment cannily bided its time. The North Balkan kingdom 
waited with masterly inactivity until Bulgaria was hopelessly 
committed to a war on her old allies. Then on July 3rd, 
Roumania mobilized. On July 10th, she declared war and 
sent her army pouring over the Danube. It was again a cold, 
non-moral proceeding, but the Balkan rulers had learned that 
nice scrupulosity seemingly paid no dividends in the greater 
capitals of Europe ; and when would a like opportunity come 
again? 1 Besides, it is more than a shrewd guess that if 
earlier there had come a broad hint from Berlin to Sofia, now 
there came one to Bucharest from St. Petersburg. Rouma- 
nia 's intervention of course sealed the fate of Bulgaria. 

The "war" was little more than a holiday march for the 
Roumanians. Their foes were already so completely at grips 

i Ferdinand of Bulgaria is alleged to have laid it down as his per- 
sonal doctrine "that if the Balkan countries were governed by brigands, 
he intended to have the brigands on his side!" 




20° Longitude East 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 447 

with the Serbs and Greeks that the Roumanians could ad- 
vance straight on Sofia. The military odds against King 
Ferdinand were so overwhelming that he and his generals 
soon gave up an utterly hopeless struggle. On July 30th came 
the armistice which was to be followed by a peace confer- 
ence at Bucharest, where the Bulgarian delegates were 
obliged to take the law humbly from their conquerors. 

However, the cup of Bulgarian sorrows was not yet full. 
Adrianople had been one of the fairest prizes just wrested 
from the Turk. But now, almost before the new Christian 
administration had settled to its task and while the Bulgars 
were struggling with their Christian foes, a rehabilitated 
Ottoman army marched down from Constantinople and with- 
out resistance reoccupied the city. There were no means for 
King Ferdinand to get it back. He could not risk single- 
handed a new war with Turkey. Adrianople and the regions 
around went back to their old possessor. 

At Bucharest the peace delegates deliberated until August 
10, 1913, when the treaty was signed which once more, for a 
little while, was to indicate the "final" map of the Balkans. 
The Bulgars had been hopelessly beaten. The Serbs and 
Greeks accused them of bad faith and extreme cruelty, and 
were in no tender mood. The Teutonic nations, chagrined 
over the outcome of this war they had provoked, could do 
nothing to aid their unlucky proteges, thanks to the non- 
intervention agreement they had urged on the other Great 
Powers. Only the moderating influence of Roumania saved 
Bulgaria from a worse fate than befell her. As it was, she 
had to cede to Roumania a large strip of the Dobrudja with 
the fortress city of Silistria, and she was almost expelled from 
Macedonia, losing besides her extreme claims many regions 
that would have been surely assigned her by the arbitration of 
the czar. All the rest of the original conquests from Turkey, 
minus of course Albania, were divided between Greece, 
Serbia and Montenegro, save only some districts of Thrace 
which were contemptuously left to King Ferdinand. And 
so the diplomats went home, the Bulgarian delegates deject- 
edly, the others joyously; and for a little while the blessing 



448 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

of peace seemed to rest on the blood-soaked Balkan peninsula. 

In these two wars about 348,000 men were killed or 
wounded, and about $1,200,000,000 in treasure expended by all 
the combatants together: figures small indeed compared with 
the awful sacrifices of Armageddon, but compared with pre- 
vious wars no trifling price to pay even for very great changes 
upon the maps. Turkey in Europe had almost disappeared. 
It had shrunk from 65,300 square miles with 6,130,000 people, 
to 10,880 square miles with about 1,900,000. Roumania had 
gained at the expense of Bulgaria 2,687 square miles with 
286,000 inhabitants. Montenegro had gained 2,125 square 
miles and 230,000 inhabitants. Bulgaria had been allowed to 
make a net gain of 9,660 square miles, but with only 125,500 
inhabitants. Serbia had nearly doubled her territory by an- 
nexing some 15,000 square miles with about 1,500,000 inhab- 
itants. Greece (thanks to getting Crete, with many islands, 
Saloniki, etc.) had been the greatest direct gainer of all. She 
had won nearly 18,000 square miles and about 1,700,000 in- 
habitants. Thus it was the Balkan powers made their answer 
to the "solemn warning" of the Powers on October 8th, 1912, 
that they would "not admit, at the end of the conflict, any 
modification in the status quo in European Turkey." 
European Turkey had been whittled to a vanishing-point, and 
not one of the six great powers had stirred. Such were the 
resources of twentieth century diplomacy ! 

The Peace of Bucharest had settled that the Turk should 
be relegated to the barest corner of Europe. Any intelligent 
man, however, knew that it did not settle anything else. It 
was decidedly unfair to Bulgaria, which had been treated after 
the sins of her rulers and of the German influences behind 
them, and not according to her inherent rights as a progres- 
sive nation. It did not give the Serbs an outlet on the ocean, 
although it brought to them pride and confidence and willing- 
ness to form violent schemes for Bosnia. It left Germany and 
Austria angry and resentful because their proteges, first the 
Turks and then the Bulgars, had been utterly beaten; they 
had been unable to rescue them, and all men knew how griev- 
ously Teutonic military experts had miscalculated. It also 



TEARING-UP OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 449 

left these same statesmen at Berlin and Vienna terror- 
stricken lest Russia make some new attempt to placate Bul- 
garia and revive the almost successful scheme of a permanent 
Balkan League, closing the German "road to the east." In 
short, the Treaty of Bucharest spelled not lasting peace but 
new collisions, and not indistinctly were the battles of the 
first and still more of the miserable second Balkan wars the 
bloody prologues to the greater tragedy of 1914. Twelve 
months after the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, the five 
greatest powers of Europe were struggling in the agony of a 
mighty conflict. 



CHAPTER XXI 

RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 

THE history of Russia since 1871 may be looked at in two 
ways : first as a phase in European international history, 
and secondly as a chapter in the political emancipation of the 
human race, in the development of democrac}^ The first is 
almost entirely a story of foreign policy and the conditions 
influencing it, the second is a study of the internal history of 
Russia. In the history of the causes of the war of 1914 the 
first is of primary importance, while the second has only an 
indirect part. And as this book deals with the causes of the 
war it is necessary to confine ourselves almost entirely to the 
foreign policy of Russia and to omit the struggle for liberal- 
ism except in so far as it affects the international position of 
the Empire. 

And yet this account can only be of historical importance, 
for the causes which led Russia to war in 1914 are of little 
value in the study of the Russia of to-day. All the factors 
which were of importance in 1914 have been swept away in 
the events which have followed the revolution of March, 1917, 
and other factors have taken their place. Therefore it is 
only fair to warn the reader that if he expects to find in this 
chapter anything that will directly help him to understand the 
Russia of 1918, its probable policy and its effect on the war, 
he will certainly be disappointed. The task of the writer is a 
simpler one : to sum up the causes which led the Russian gov- 
ernment of 1914 to enter the war and to place these causes in 
their historical background. 1 

1 It will of course be realized that in 1914 the foreign policy of Russia 
was in control of an absolutely different class of men from those who 
seized it in 1917-18. Many of the leaders of the moderate liberal 
movement, who deposed the Czar in 1917 and who were then quickly 
forced out of power by the rising flood of ultra-radicalism, were perhaps 

450 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 451 

Three causes probably led Russia to break with Germany. 
The first was the age-long search for an ice-free port as an 
outlet for Russian commerce. The second was the industrial 
development of Russia, the growth of a capitalist class and the 
demands which this class made on the Russian government 
and on Russian policy. The third is the force of Pan-Slavism, 
the idea of the union of the entire Slav race under the protec- 
tion of Holy Russia. These three causes taken together will 
probably explain the entry of Russia into the war. 

Take a map of Russia. It will soon be seen that she has no 
outlet for her commerce which is not controlled to some 
extent by another power, or, if free in this respect, is not ice- 
bound for several months in the year. On the north is the 
port of Archangel, ice-bound during the greater part of the 
winter, and whose railway connections to the south are also 
frequently ice-bound as well. Her Baltic commerce must 
pass through seas controlled by Germany, and her Black Sea 
commerce must pass through the Bosporus and the Darda- 
nelles, controlled by Turkey. On the east she has never been 
able to get further south than Vladivostok, ice-bound for 
three months in the year. And so it is a natural result of this 
situation that Russia should strive to find a free outlet, either 
by pushing into China or else down to Constantinople, or pos- 
sibly by a third route down through Persia to the Persian 
Gulf. Any of these solutions would be acceptable to the 
Russian government, and yet, up to 1914, she had failed in all 
three directions. 

The reason is easy to see. Take the case of Constantinople. 
Of course the presence of Russia at Constantinople is of 
vital interest to the Turks, for it would probably mean the 
destruction of their Empire. But behind Turkey stood other 
powers, interested in keeping things as they are and in pre- 
venting any Russian acquisition of the Bosporus and the 
Dardanelles. In short, wherever she turned, Russia found 
across her path certain powers, or combination of powers, that 
were strong enough to check her policy. A somewhat more 

more heartily in favor of an aggressive foreign policy than many of the 
old-line absolutists. [ W. S. D.] 



452 THE ROOTS OF THE AVAR 

detailed study of these various efforts will, perhaps, bring out 
more clearly the difficulties with which Russia has had to 
contend. 

Russia has tried these various solutions separately. The 
historic solution has always been the acquisition of Constanti- 
nople. Peter the Great, the founder of modern Russia, in 
the early eighteenth century directed Russian arms towards 
this solution. Gradually in the next century and a quarter 
Russia pushed her hold around the Black Sea toward the 
Danube and Constantinople. But in this forward progress 
she found two adversaries. The first was Austria, which ob- 
jected to the extension of the Russian empire in the Balkans 
because in the first place it would unduly strengthen the Rus- 
sian Empire; and in the second place she wished to exploit 
the Balkans for herself. The second enemy was even more 
determined to prevent a Russian possession of Constantinople. 
Ever since she gained India in the eighteenth century, Eng- 
land has dreaded the great power of Russia placed on the flank 
of her line of communications with this dependency, and it has 
been one of the standing features of her policy to prevent 
Russia from gaining a position from which this line of com- 
munication could be broken. That Constantinople was such a 
position was clear to almost all the English statesmen of the 
middle of the last century. Add to this the fact that England 
had large commercial interests in Turkey which would be de- 
stroyed by a Russian Constantinople and it is easy to see 
why England was a determined enemy to the Russian plan. 

There were other allies for England and Austria in their 
effort to stop Russian development, but as these allies changed 
constantly and were moved by opportunistic motives it is not 
necessary to give their policies in detail. Suffice it to say that 
England and, to a less extent, Austria always formed the 
kernel of these combinations. The result was that Russia 
was balked by force of arms in the Crimean War of 1854-56 
and again by diplomacy after the successful war with Turkey 
in 1877-78. Constantinople seemed for the time being unat- 
tainable, and Russia turned her attention elsewhere. 

Her next effort was less consistently followed and may have 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 453 

been only a diversion to draw the attention of Europe from the 
Balkans. But it would appear that in the eighties Russia 
took up with some seriousness the idea of pushing south to the 
Persian Gulf and finding there her ice-free port. Turkestan 
was overrun by Russian forces, and Russian outposts were 
pushed far into Afghanistan and south into Persia. Such a 
solution of Russian difficulties was as distasteful and danger- 
ous to England as was the Constantinople solution, for a Rus- 
sian stronghold on the Persian Gulf was quite as dangerous 
to India as a Russian Constantinople. And so when Russia 
occupied the city of Merv in 1885 on the northern border of 
Afghanistan, the English public had an attack of what was 
wittily described as * ; Mervousness " and war with Russia was 
freely discussed. But the expected war did not take place 
because Russia, for some reason, declined to push her progress 
further. Merv was retained, but the progress to the Persian 
Gulf seemed to have stopped. 

Perhaps the reason for this change in policy was that Russia 
felt that she had a better solution at hand for her difficulties. 
For many years Siberia had been to Russia practically an un- 
occupied territory. A handful of roving Cossacks, miners, 
prospectors of every sort and kind, fur hunters and traders 
had wandered into the land, but it was still mainly left to the 
tribes of native Indians. 1 But in the years immediately be- 
fore 1890, the plan was developed of a settlement of the Si- 
berian Plains by Russian colonists and of an outlet to the 
warm water on the Pacific. Finally in 1891 the Trans-Si- 
berian railway was started and the intention was to make its 
terminus at some ice-free Pacific port. But such a port could 
only be found within the territory of China, which led to the 
Russian encroachment on that country. 

This encroachment on China, however, brought into the field 
a number of opponents for Russia. In the first place, Eng- 
land and the United States were pledged to support the integ- 

i The term is a bit confusing but seems customarily used to describe 
the native races of Siberia. They are on a low scale of civilization, 
not utterly unlike that of the Indians of Alaska to whom they are, 
perhaps, related. 



454 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

rity of China. In 1900, as the Russian plan was becoming 
more and more evident, Mr. John Hay, the secretary of state 
of the United States, asserted the principle of the "Open 
Door ' ' by which was laid down the integrity of China against 
any attack whatsoever. But inasmuch as this doctrine was 
not defended by any measure stronger than expostulation, 
and as England did not appear to desire to act alone, Russia 
might have attained her ends had it not been for another 
power, more vitally interested and more determined to main- 
tain her aims. This was Japan. 

Korea and Manchuria were vital to the Nippones, because 
they produced much of the food necessary to Japan. And 
it was through these districts that Russia had decided to 
pass on her way to the warm water port, Port Arthur, which 
was made the terminus of the Siberian Railway. Japan 
was determined that no strong power like Russia should be 
entrenched across the narrow straits a short voyage from 
her own shores. And so that Empire began a determined 
resistance to Russian encroachment, and in 1902 England 
joined with the Japanese in a defensive alliance. Strength- 
ened by this new support the Japanese resisted every effort 
of the Russians, and when it finally came to war in 1905 
utterly defeated them, to the great surprise of most of the 
world. 

Thus ended the Russian dream of an ice-free port on the 
Pacific. But the fact that Russia was balked in one direction 
did not mean that she was to give up the game : it merely 
meant that she was to revert to another solution. "Within 
two years after the Russo-Japanese War, Russia had "liqui- 
dated" her claims in the Far East — to use the phrase of M. 
Isvolski, the then Russian secretary of foreign affairs, and had 
reverted to her old policy in the Near East and to her efforts to 
secure Constantinople as her ice-free port. But before we 
take up this last phase of Russian policy in detail it might be 
worth while to compare the two policies of expansion, in the 
Near East and the Far East, as to their effect, first on Russian 
opinion and secondly on international affairs. 

In the first place the policy of securing Constantinople was 



KUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 455 

the historic policy of Russia. For a century and three-quar- 
ters it had been inflexibly carried on through weal and woe 
and the Russian people could not understand its abandonment. 
Then, too it was to them the natural goal of Russian ambition. 
Remember that from Constantinople had come to Russia not 
only religion but civilization, and the eyes of the great major- 
ity of the Russian people turned toward it as the center of the 
world. Just as in the Middle Ages Rome was the religious 
and cultural center of the world for the men of western Eu- 
rope, so Tsarigrad — the city of the czars, as they termed Con- 
stantinople, — was the religious and cultural center of the 
world for the Russian peasant. To place that city in its 
natural position under the ' ' Little Father, ' ' to plant the cross 
on Sancta Sophia, he would gladly sacrifice his all. And so 
any move toward Constantinople would secure the willing 
support of the Russian people. 

But it was far different with the Far Eastern venture. 
Vladivostok and Port Arthur were too far away to be more 
than dimly known to the average Russian. In them centered 
none of the tradition, none of the sentiment with which Con- 
stantinople was surrounded. And so the Russian peasant 
trooped off to the war against Japan, not willingly, but simply 
because the czar had ordered it ; to his mind, the word of the 
czar was still law. But there was none of the popular en- 
thusiasm with which the wars against Turkey had been pro- 
claimed: it was not a popular war with the masses. Indeed, 
it seems to have been more than anything else a capitalists' 
war, a war to secure rights for a railroad company, a timber 
monopoly, and the Siberian capitalists. And over all these 
projects was thrown the camouflage of the desire for an ice- 
free port for Russian development: a real need, but a need 
not met best by a Russian Port Arthur, but by a Russian Con- 
stantinople. And so when Russia oscillated, between 1906 
and 1908, from her Far Eastern venture back to her historic 
policy of expansion toward Constantinople, it was to put again 
in force a policy much more ancient and much more popular 
than that which had led to the battlefields of Manchuria and to 
the Peace of Portsmouth, 



456 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

It meant, however, more than a change to a policy more 
popular with the Russian people ; it meant a complete revolu- 
tion in the international position of Russia. So long as Rus- 
sia pursued her Far Eastern policy, England was her enemy 
and Germany her friend ; when she oscillated back to the Near 
East, England became her friend and Germany her enemy. 
The reason for this is easy to see. A Russia encroaching on 
China was sure to arouse the enmity of England which had 
pledged herself to the integrity of the Celestial Empire, while 
on the other hand as long as Russia was occupied in the Far 
East Germany had her hands free to pursue her own policy in 
the Near East: she therefore favored Russia's designs and 
urged her on. Anything that would at the same time keep 
Russia occupied in distant parts and on bad terms with Eng- 
land was so much grist to the German and Austrian mill. 
And, free from danger from this quarter, Germany busied 
herself with the control of Turkey and with the Bagdad 
railway while Austria busied herself with plans for the 
economic control of the Balkans. And Russia made a very 
feeble resistance to these schemes: her attention lay else- 
where. 

But with the orientation of Russian attention back to the 
Near East the whole situation was changed. It was a direct 
threat to all the plans of Germany and Austria. No longer 
could Austria peacefully exploit the Balkans, and Germany 
the Turkish Empire; they must now count on Russian de- 
mands and Russian opposition. Moreover, this change made 
possible the friendship of England for Russia. If the latter 
was no longer a danger to China and to India, England could 
easily form a friendship with her, especially since the new 
Russian policy seemed likely to bring her into hostility with 
the arch-enemy of England, Germany. And so in 1907 Eng- 
land and Russia agreed to wipe the slate clean of any difficul- 
ties between them and to pursue parallel policies in interna- 
tional affairs. Even a Russian Constantinople had ceased to 
be a bug-bear to English statesmen, for between that and a 
German Constantinople the choice in favor of the former was 
easy. 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 457 

Another power, for many years a nominal ally, found aid 
and comfort in this change of Russian policy. France, allied 
to Russia since 1893, had gained little from Russian support 
in the years when Russia was involved in the Far East. For 
France the alliance was intended as a protection against Ger- 
many, but during the Far Eastern years Russia was too much 
occupied to think of her lonely ally in the west. Indeed dur- 
ing these years she was fully as much the ally of Germany 
as of France. But with the change and its attendant hostility 
to Germany, Russia and France were drawn closer together. 
The Triple Entente, France, England and Russia, really dates 
from 1908. 

Such w T ere the results of this change of front on the part of 
the Russian Empire. Renewal of the friendship with France, 
a new friendship with England, hostility, on the other hand, 
with Austria and Germany. It completed the formation of 
alliances out of which was to spring the war of 1914. 

But the return of Russia to a desire for Constantinople was 
not the sole reason for this new interest in the Near East. It 
may have been the main reason with the Russian government, 
and it probably was a strong factor in the popular mind. 
But there was another reason for the change, very strong with 
the Russian people and not without its influence on the gov- 
ernment. This may be summed up in one word : Pan-Slavism. 

Pan-Slavism is a very difficult movement to define because it 
undoubtedly meant different things to different men. Orig- 
inally it was merely a movement to organize, protect and 
assist Slavonic culture: music, literature, art. But gradu- 
ally it took on a political meaning: the union, so far as pos- 
sible, of all the Slavonic peoples into one political whole. 
And as it was expressed by the Russian government, it almost 
certainly meant the extension of Russian power and influence 
over all the Slavonic race. In its hands it became a tool of 
Russian imperialism, a movement to be utilized if it served 
Russian ends, if not, to be abandoned. But it is very doubt- 
ful if it meant this to the Russian peasant. To him all Slavs 
were brothers, the sorrows of one were the sorrows of all, the 
advantages of one should be the advantages of all. Were 



458 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

these Slavs groaning in captivity to Mohammedan Turk or 
heretic Austrian or German? Then it was the duty of the 
Slavs everywhere to unite to deliver them from their yoke. 
From the standpoint of the Russian peasant, Pan-Slavism was 
not unlike the spirit of the men of the French Revolution who 
having voted liberty to all mankind, rushed to the frontier, 
arms in their hands, to deliver subject peoples from the yoke 
and to endow them with the advantages of liberty they them- 
selves had won. 

But it is easy to see the distrust this movement was apt 
to bring to neighboring peoples. Turkey up to 1912, Austria 
and Germany in 1914, had Slav peoples among their subjects 
and in no case were they well treated. Especially did 
Austria appear threatened by this movement (see pp. 329ft* ) , 
for the majority of the population of the Austro-Hungarian 
empire was Slav and was misgoverned and oppressed. 
Such a movement as this meant in the minds of the Austrian 
statesmen the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian em- 
pire, and ought, therefore, to be opposed in every possible 
way. Especially dangerous was the governmental theory of 
Pan-Slavism, for that meant the absorption of the greater 
part of Austria, and of the Balkans by Russia, and the 
destruction of the balance of power in Europe. And so 
they denounced Pan-Slavism as an international danger. 

What, however, they did not see or did not care to see was 
that the remedy lay in their own hands. The history of 
Bulgaria or Serbia could have taught them that the Balkan 
or Austrian Slavs had no intention of escaping from one yoke 
only to fall under another — that of Russia. The only rea- 
son that these Slavs were willing to listen to Russia was 
that Russia offered them a way to freedom from oppression: 
were the oppression removed, the voices from Russia would 
call in vain. And yet because they refused to see this, they 
made of Pan-Slavism a danger, and left a fertile ground for 
the emissaries of the Russian government to exploit. The 
Pan-Slavism of the Russian peasant was a spiritual union of 
all the Slavs, the Pan-Slavism of the Russian intellectuals was 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 459 

a cultural union: both were not without danger for either 
Austria or Europe. The Pan-Slavism of the Russian govern- 
ment indeed was such a danger, but this danger was vastly in- 
creased by the stupid attitude of Austria toward the move- 
ment. 

Whoever may be to blame, there can be little doubt that 
Pan-Slavism tended greatly to embitter the relations between 
Russia and Teutonic Europe in the years immediately preced- 
ing the war. The movement was very popular in Russia and 
the tales of oppression of the Slavs in Austria-Hungary 
fanned Russian popular resentment to a white heat. The 
annexation of Bosnia-Herzgovina in 1908 and the humiliation 
of Serbia were blows at Slavdom that the Russian popular 
mind did not easily forget. The pitcher that goes too often to 
the well is generally broken, and the constant measures taken 
by Austria against the Slavs in her own dominion and in 
Serbia greatly increased the flood of resentment against the 
Austro-Hungarian government. And when the final blow 
came in 1914 it can hardly be doubted that the great majority 
of the Russian people joined the czar in his feeling that 
this state of affairs had been endured long enough and that the 
time for patience had passed. 

There is one other feature of Pan-Slavism, less important 
in its effects on the war than the features just mentioned, but 
yet not without its effects. The new Russian culture, started 
by Peter the Great, was not Russian at base, but West 
European and imposed on Russia by the will of the czar. 
Naturally, then, the men who assisted the czar in this cul- 
tural and administrative work would be drawn in from out- 
side. Finally the ruling family of Romanoff had intermarried 
so frequently into German houses as to become almost more 
German than Russian. And so the czars tended to call on 
Germans to carry on the government of Russia. The court 
circles of St. Petersburg, once cosmopolitan, became more and 
more German. Bismarck was nearly prevailed on to enter 
the Russian service — it is interesting to speculate on what 
would have been the results had he accepted the czar 's offer — 



460 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

and many others were approached with better results. 1 A 
register of the bureaucracy and of the army gave a prepon- 
derance of German names. Against this the Pan-Slavs pro- 
tested. They desired that the government should be in the 
hands of Russians, not Germans; and that Russian not Ger- 
man tradition should control it. But to Germany this was a 
vital matter. So long as there were a number of Germans 
in the government service it would be hard for the government 
to take an anti-German course ; were these men dismissed Ger- 
many would lose a strong hold on Russian affairs. Germany 
therefore opposed Pan-Slavism on this account as well, and 
urged on the czar the necessity of German friendship and the 
value of Germans as officials. And in this it appears to have 
been, in the main, successful. Germans retained their grip 
on government offices up to 1914, as Russia was to learn to her 
sorrow in the war. 

There was a third cause that moved Russia to the war 
against Germany, which was somewhat apart from a desire for 
Constantinople, and entirely apart from a desire to help op- 
pressed Slavs. This was the desire of the new industrial 
class, which had been rising in Russia for the twenty years 
preceding 1914, for economic nationalism and economic inde- 
pendence from Germany. The influence of this desire on the 
Russian government and the Russian people is not so easy to 
see as the influence of Pan-Slavism and the desire for Con- 
stantinople, and yet it was almost certainly a strong one. It 
remains, then, to trace out this cause for the war in its historic 
development and to show its connection with the outbreak of 
hostilities. 

Russia, in 1871, was almost entirely an agricultural country, 
a land of estates on which was produced almost everything 
that the simple needs of the people required. Luxuries were 
imported from outside, but they were comparatively few. 
Fifteen years afterwards, however, a change began to take 
place. Manufactories began to spring up all over Russia 
and their growth was almost American in its swiftness. 

i Some of the worst agents of Russian autocracy were of German 
extraction, notably Von Plehve. 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 461 

Within twenty years (1887-1907) the number of factory op- 
eratives in Russia had grown from one and a quarter million 
to over three million; an increase of over one hundred and 
fifty per cent. Cities grew up at mushroom speed, expand- 
ing from a few thousands to over two hundred thousand. At 
the beginning of the twenty-year period ten per cent, of the 
Russian population dwelt in cities; at the end of the period 
it had increased to fifteen per cent. The production of iron, 
of coal, of textile fabrics increased by leaps and bounds. 
Railway construction was enormously increased during these 
years; in the period 1885-1913 the mileage increased from 
sixteen thousand to fifty-one thousand, or over three times. 
By 1914 Russia was no longer purely an agricultural coun- 
try ; it was rapidly becoming an industrial one. 

Much of the capital which had produced these changes came 
in from foreign countries, but a goodly share of it was Rus- 
sian. And the result was the development of an urban cap- 
italist class anxious to protect Russian industry against out- 
side competition. But the outside competition had become, 
by 1914, almost entirely German. The German empire was 
glad to allow Russian grain a free entry because it wished to 
provide cheap food for its industrial population, but it wished 
to pay for this grain by providing Russia with the products 
of German manufactories. Any change in the tariff regula- 
tions between the two countries was bound to work to the 
detriment of Germany, because it could only retort to a 
Russian protective tariff on German manufactures by a tariff 
on Russian grain: and this duty would be paid, not by the 
Russian farmer, but by the German consumer, to whom this 
grain was a necessity. 

The tariff in force between the two states dated from 1905. 
It had been extorted from the Russian government at the 
time when Russia. was in difficulties in the Far East and 
needed German support. But in 1915 the treaty would run 
out and the Russian industrial classes were determined that 
it should not be renewed without great concessions on the 
part of Germany. As a result the industrial classes in the 
latter country were resolved, if possible, to force Russia to 



462 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

renew the treaty as it stood. In the spring of 1914, threats 
were freely published in the German newspapers and replied 
to in those of Russia: newspapers were inspired by the rival 
groups of capitalists that did much to add fuel to the flames 
of resentment between the two countries. If this was not one 
of the great causes of war, at least it appears to have recon- 
ciled the industrial classes of Russia and Germany to its 
possibility. 

These three causes then made impossible the continuance of 
good relations between Russia and Germany. (I) First, the 
renewal of the idea of gaining Constantinople as an ice-free 
port for the export of Russian goods, to which was joined 
the desire of the Russian people to possess the place which 
was, to them, the center of the world. This plan inevitably 
collided with the plans of Germany and Austria to exploit the 
Balkans and Turkey for themselves, and rendered a conflict 
certain unless one side changed its policy. (II) Second, was 
the movement of Pan-Slavism : the idea of the union of all the 
Slavs, which made every Russian sensitive to the oppression 
of their racial brothers by Austria and Germany and, on the 
other hand, made these states apprehensive of a movement 
which would disrupt the one and curtail the territory of the 
other. (Ill) Lastly was the growth of an industrial class in 
Russia which wished to protect Russian manufactories against 
German competition and to change a tariff arrangement which 
allowed the German manufacturer to flood Russia with his 
goods. To this pile of inflammable material the Austrian de- 
mands on Serbia were the match which started the conflagra- 
tion. 

Conditions in Russia in 1914 were distinctly chaotic. An 
autocratic government is entirely dependent on the character 
and personality of the autocrat: if he be a strong man he 
will rule, otherwise he will be controlled by the men who sur- 
round him. Nicholas II was not a strong man. Amiable, 
well-intentioned, he seemed incapable of a strong consistent 
policy but was swayed by the feelings of the moment or by 
the influence of the changing groups who surrounded him. 
He seems to have regarded William II as a bulwark against the 



RUSSIAN POLICY AND THE GREAT WAR 463 

rising flood of democracy in his dominions, and yet he appears 
not to have been insensible to the demands of Russian patriot- 
ism. His foreign minister, Sazonof, seems to have been an 
upright, conscientious gentleman, although he was without 
great knowledge of European affairs or a very fixed and 
certain policy. Many of the court were strongly German in 
sympathy, partly because of value received, partly because 
they felt that only through friendship with Germany could 
autocracy be upheld. The attitude of Russian diplomats 
abroad was uncertain and even contradictory. A well- 
informed observer sums up the Russian diplomacy of this 
period as follows: 1 "It is difficult, even after the event, to 
get any clear idea of the purpose and proceedings of Russian 
diplomacy, further than that it has been going to and fro in 
the earth and walking up and down in it; for, even when it 
plays providence, it moves in a mysterious way." Uncer- 
tainty, confusion, contradiction marked the Russian policy 
in the summer of 1914. 

The anti-German party was led by the Grand Duke Nicho- 
las, married to a daughter of the king of Montenegro. Prac- 
tically commander-in-chief of the army, he had been working 
on the problem of preparedness and waiting for the day when 
his army could try conclusions with Germany. He was the 
unofficial leader of the Pan-Slavist movement, and his emis- 
saries filled the Balkans with intrigue. Whether he wanted 
war in 1914 is doubtful; he would almost certainly have liked 
to wait for several years until the army was in better shape. 
But, in his mind, the war seems to have been regarded as 
inevitable, and he intended that Russia should be ready when 
it came. Such were the plans of the Grand Duke Nicholas 
and his following, — the war party in Russia. 

Opposed to him was a group of men not by nature pro- 
Germans, but whose policy was favorable to German plans. 
This was the so-called party of the "Easterners." This group 
had never accepted the abandonment of Russia's designs in 
the Far East, and it now urged that they be taken up 
again and that the Pan-Slavist and Constantinople policy be 

i "Nationalism and the War in the Near East, by "A Diplomat." 



464 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

abandoned. Russia, it declared, had nothing to gain in 
the Balkans, and had no interest in opposing Germany. In 
the East could the real Russian empire be found, not in the 
direction of Constantinople. Such was the theme of the cele- 
brated "Secret Memoir" of Baron Rosen, handed in some 
time in early 1914, and such was the advice of General Kuro- 
patkin and others. The stroke of the Pan-Germans against 
Serbia cut the ground from underneath this party. 

But behind all these parties was the Russian people. And 
there can be little doubt that after the Austrian demands on 
Serbia, the vast majority of the thinking Russian people was 
united in the feeling that Serbia should be protected at all 
costs. And so, at bottom, it was a peoples' war that Russia 
declared in 1914, even though the uneducated parts of the 
Russian population understood it not. But their views on 
the subject are of later formation: all that can be done in 
this chapter is to point out the situation as it existed in 1914 
and to leave to other hands the account of the further course 
of events. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE LAST YEARS IN THE FOOI/S PARADISE 

THE five or six years preceding Armageddon seemed 
to show the world as an increasingly calm and happy 
place. This was true despite the shock of Agadir and of the 
Balkan wars. Great " crises" had come and gone, but the 
Western powers had never joined battle save in the news- 
papers. Responsible statesmen had apparently suppressed 
the jingoes. Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann-Hollweg seemed 
to be treating the Pan-Germanists with contempt. As for a 
general European war, widespread opinion was that it would 
be so unsettling economically, as well as so inhumanely de- 
structive, that the money kings of the world, more powerful 
by far than their "crowned puppets," would never suffer it. 
If their potent influence failed, confident predictions had it 
that the socialists of Europe, by some kind of a general 
strike, would render the wicked schemes of capitalistic rulers 
hopeless : and this opinion was comfortably adhered to, not- 
withstanding the firm refusals of the German socialists to join 
in pledges to their non-German "comrades" to support a 
policy of extreme nonresistance, and the clear announcement 
by German socialist leaders that in a defensive war they and 
their followers would shoulder guns as bravely as the junk- 
ers. 1 But even apart from this alleged but certainly peculiar 

i Of course there has never been an admittedly "offensive" war in 
all modern history. Every nation avowedly has taken up arms because 
it was actually "attacked" or because its dearest rival was "violating 
its rights" so wantonly as to constitute an attack. By making this 
exception the German socialists practically gave away the entire 
case. 

Considering the inordinate hopes which non-German pacifists placed 
on the socialist influences in Germany, it is not unfair to suggest that 
here again was a part of the general German peace-propaganda, to lull 

465 



466 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

alliance of the toilers and the money kings in the blessed 
cause of peace, there were thousands of other reasons which 
made supposedly wise men declare wars impossible, and 
armies and navies increasingly useless. "I do not believe 
there ever will be another serious war," asserted a distin- 
guished French lecturer touring the United States in 1912, 
"and I will tell you why — because we have out-grown wars, 
they are too silly." And vast audiences had applauded. It 
was a period of innumerable "peace conferences/'' concilia- 
tion proposals, enrollment of women and school-children in 
peace-leagues, cut-and-dried infallible schemes for substitut- 
ing courts of arbitration for shrapnel, and for ending the 
questions of Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, the Balkans, and the de- 
sires of the Pan-Germans for a new Roman empire, by apply- 
ing a few delightfully simple principles for international con- 
duct as worked out by self-constituted reformers, men who 
knew little of the concrete problems they so jauntily attacked. 
American millionaires endowed costly peace institutes with 
well-salaried staffs of excellent gentlemen, without special 
diplomatic training, to go up and down the world explaining 
how foolish it was to dream of aggressive schemes on the part 
of one's neighbors. This peace propaganda had of course 
been seized upon especially in America with the customary 
Yankee enthusiasm for "something new": and no doubt it 
attracted its largest lecture audiences and circulated the 
greatest multitude of its tracts in the United States where 
whole cities were ready as a unit to assent to the cheer- 
ful dictum, e. g., that it was absurd for Alsace-Lorraine to 

to rest the fears of other nations until the right hour struck. The 
complete docility of the German socialists in event of a crisis was as- 
suredly one of the most important things the General Staff made cer- 
tain of before preparing its blow. Of course there were plenty of Ger- 
man socialists who were sincere lovers of peace fas the earnest protests 
against the Serbian note demonstrated), and who deplored the mili- 
taristic tendencies of their country, but the General Staff knew their 
action would be strictly vocal, and that "conscientious objectors" would 
be a negligible factor the instant martial law was proclaimed. The 
German socialists seem to have obeyed the summons to arms with the 
docility of cattle. 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 467 

keep France and Germany asunder. But American pacifism, 
although possibly the best financed, was hardly more aggres- 
sive and outwardly successful than that of France and 
England. 1 In France pacifism took the form of a violent 
agitation against the army and its discipline, with the clear 
suggestion that there was no need of trying to prepare against 
a German attack which could never possibly happen. In 
England pacifism made such an impression upon the some- 
what stodgy, unimaginative and essentially peace-loving 
"lower-middle" and laboring classes, that any attempt to 
introduce general military service became extra difficult. In 
Italy the propaganda also made hopeful headway, as of course 
it did in all the small non-Balkan countries of Europe, where 
consciousness of military impotence easily convinced even the 
foreign ministers that arbitration was far better than artil- 
lery. Russia was of course sodden in her medievalism, and 
admittedly conditions in Germany and Austria were less 
favorable to the cause than elsewhere, 2 although enough per- 
sons were found to write encouraging letters to the pacifist 
leaders of France, England and America to make the latter 
certain that the good leaven was working, and that if only 
their own countries would refrain from irritating the Teutonic 
' ' extremists ' ' by insisting on maintaining considerable armies 
and fleets themselves, the happy day would soon dawn when a 

i In England the "Gorton Foundation" seems to have done its best 
to persuade the nation that the German menace was an evil imagining. 

2 It is worthy of note that although the very considerable band of 
peripatetic pacifist apostles, English and American, seem to have 
gained limited hearings and cold courtesy, when they visited Germany, 
and even sometimes hootings and "unpleasant incidents." outside of 
Germany. Teutonic influence seems to have been very decidedly on their 
side. E.g., the most vigorous champion in the Congress of the United 
States of "peace movements," and an equally vigorous opponent of 
increase of the American army and navy, for long seems to have been a 
congressman from a western state with a predominantly German con- 
stituency and himself of German antecedents, habits and sympathies, 
although undoubtedly loyal to America. Probably like instances could 
be found in other lands wherever the Hohenzollern influence extended. 
It is alleged that a part of the English peace movement was financed 
by men of demonstrably German connection. 



468 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

fortunate humanity, released from the bare imaginings of war, 
would find itself unitedly beating its spears into pruning- 
hooks. 

The detailed history of the "peace-movement" between 
1900 and 1914, the story of how men and women of apparent 
sanity and in many cases at least of perfect purity of motive, 
hypnotized themselves as well as deluded millions of others 
who accepted their opinions as facts into believing that a great 
war had become impossible — this story will constitute one of 
the most interesting as well as one of the most melancholy in 
all human annals. Had the propaganda had only a little 
greater shade of success ; had it been able to drug England into 
curtailing her fleet and France into curtailing her army, the 
Pan-German dream might have enjoyed almost instantaneous 
fulfillment. 

Such a movement, "prophesying smooth things," and pro- 
viding a philosophic justiiication for believing what every 
honest Englishman, Frenchman and American was fain to 
believe if his intelligence permitted, required of course a 
literary prophet: and such a prophet was at hand. Mr. 
Ralph N. A. Lane's "The Great Illusion" 1 seems at this 
writing as ancient and withal as discredited a volume as the 
Egyptian "Book of the Dead": and yet it was actually pub- 
lished as recently as 1910. Its issuance was considered by its 
author (who preferred the pen-name of "Norman Angell") 
and his backers as an international event. Not merely did it 
appear simultaneously in London and New York, but also in 
Paris, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Madrid, Leyden, Borga (Fin- 
land), Stockholm, Turin and Tokio. Some of the great incor- 
porated peace agencies with their enormous financial re- 
sources, seem to have given "Norman Angell V ideas their 
peculiar favor and benediction. The writer took himself with 
the colossal seriousness worthy of a new apostle from Mecca 
proclaiming a new Koran. In his preface he explained care- 
fully what were the ' ' key chapters " of a book which had in its 
first draft "provoked discussion throughout Europe." A 
synopsis was provided for the unlucky mortals who could not 

1 See note 1 at end of chapter, on Ealph Norman Angell Lane. 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 469 

tarry to study the complete gospel, although the author, over- 
whelmed by the greatness of his mission earnestly assured 
them, ' ' those who desire to understand thoroughly the signifi- 
cance of the thesis with which the book deals — and it is worth 
understanding — had better read every line of it." (''Great 
Illusion," p. iv.) 

"Norman Angell" was not always lucky indeed in his 
choice of authorities. For example, — he repeatedly quoted as 
an ' ' acute American observer, ' ' useful to prove several of his 
most essential points, a person whose name seems identical 
with an American journalist who received most unpleasant 
notoriety in 1917 for alleged pro-German sympathies and 
propaganda. (G. L, p. 324 and p. 332. 1 ) 

This author also took pains to advertise the fact that 
"within three months of the appearance (of his preliminary 
pamphlet) the German ambassador in London had made the 
principles outlined the basis of a diplomatic pronouncement " 
(G. I., p. 348). None of these things troubled Mr. Lane or 
anybody else in 1910. His book had an enormous vogue on 
both sides of the Atlantic and was accepted by its author and 
his friends as of epoch-making importance: — and important 
it was, as aiding to mark not the beginning, as they imagined, 
but the close of an era. 

Mr. Lane attacked the, old methods of the peace-advocates 
who had argued against war merely because it was very 
cruel. Perhaps this is true, but it will never convince the 
world, because in private affairs men are often very cruel like- 
wise. Mr. Lane knew a far better reason for abolishing war 
— because it did not pay. First of all, armaments were of 
little use in protecting "weak" unaggressive states against 
aggressive ones. Why does one know this? Because little 
states, barely able to struggle if attacked, today (1910) are 
far happier and more prosperous than strong military ones. 
They are not liable to conquest because "conquest becomes 

1 These references are to the first edition of "The Great Illusion," 
1910: in which the author stated most bluntly what appear to have 
been his real convictions. In later editions some portions of his gospel 
seem to have been prudently modified. 



470 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

economically futile." (G. L, p. viii.) Trade is an infinitely 
complex thing and all human prosperity depends on trade. 
The least military knock will disturb it. Thus it does no 
real good, e. g. for Germany to over-run one of her minor 
neighbors. "When Germany annexed Schleswig-Holstein 
and Alsace, not a single ordinary Germany citizen was one 
pfenning the richer." (G. I., p. 37.) x Then why assume that 
the conquerors will be so stupid as to blunder for another 
time and seize something that will breed them only trouble? 
"The conqueror is thus reduced to economic impotence. . . . 
Armies and navies cannot destroy the trade of rivals nor can 
they capture it. The great nations of Europe do not destroy 
the trade of small nations to their benefit because they can- 
not." (G. I., p. 37.) 

In proof of the above assertion Mr. Lane looked at the 
higher security of the government bonds of the little coun- 
tries rather than of the big, and surely the financiers know 
the cold facts : — ' ' Thus the three per cents, of powerless 
Belgium are quoted at 96 and the three per cents, of powerful 
Germany at 82 . . . all of which carries with it the paradox 
that the more a nation's wealth is protected the less secure 
does it become." (p. 38.) Of course "Norman Angell's" 
powers of vision did not reach forward the scant four years 
when Belgium was to be systematically looted after the man- 
ner of a Sennacherib or a Nebuchadnezzar. 

Trade, credit, the prompt exchange of commodities and 
the steady processes of banking have become so indispensable 
to the world that it was really a silly speculation to imagine 
the capture of London by a host of invading Germans would 
do any special harm to London. What if the Teutons did 
seize the Bank of England? Of course every other British 
bank would suspend payment. That would hit all the Ger- 
man banks and their correspondents and "German finance 
would present a condition of chaos hardly less terrible than 

i "Norman Angell" apparently was entirely ignorant of the great 
economic gain to Germany from the seizure of the Alsace-Lorraine iron 
mines. In 1918 Germans were declaring it would spell industrial ruin 
to their empire to release the annexed ore districts. 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 471 

that of England. " The German general who ordered the 
deed would himself find "that his own balance in the Bank 
of Berlin would have vanished in thin air . . . and for the 
sake of loot, amounting to a few sovereigns a-piece among 
his soldiers, he would have sacrificed the greater part of his 
own personal fortnue." (G. I., p. 55.) Even if the German 
army were guilty of such "economic vandalism," Teutonic 
banking interests would raise such an outcry that the war 
would probably stop, and as for the German jingoes, "an 
elementary lesson in international finance, which the occasion 
afforded would do more than the greatness of the British 
navy to cool their blood." (G. I., p. 56.) * 

And so through an elaborate argument ! Much of the dis- 
cussion and logic was undoubtedly clever, and many of the 
points worthy of serious consideration, but the whole book 
was charged with a Sadducean materialism, with half-truths, 
and with evasions of patent spiritual facts which made it one 
of the most unhappy documents of its age. A great English 
thinker and critic, Frederic Harrison, in March, 1914, stated 
thus the whole impression which this widely disseminated 
book produced upon him: "I have long ago described the 
policy of 'The Great Illusion' . . . not only as a childish 
absurdity but a mischievous and immoral sophism. ... To 
preach a doctrine of Peace as if its main principle were finan- 

i There seem to have been various other Englishmen willing to play 
with the cheerful idea that military conquest by the Teutons would 
have nothing very distressing about it. A Mr. Brailsford, in his book, 
"The War of Steel and Gold," published early in 1914, argued that even 
if Germany did conquer all armed opposition, nobody would be really 
one penny the worse. He added his measured and solemn opinion, 
however, that "there will be no more wars among the six great powers." 

As Sir Gilbert Murray observed a little later, "I think we may as- 
sume that the author's opinion of the comparative harmlessness of 
being conquered by Germany has been as much changed as his belief 
that there would be no more European wars." Presumably a like 
change took place in the mind of the excellent Mr. Lane. 

Pacifists in general seem to have expected that German generals 
would wage war with about all the amenities of medieval tourna- 
ments in silken Languedoc, and not after the robust manner developed 
in 1914. 



472 THE ROOTS OF THE "WAR 

cial and material interest is rank falsehood to all the lessons 
of history . . . but it is also a degrading distortion of the 
genuine sources of patriotic enthusiasm. ' ' 

Indemnities would not pay; annexations would not pay; 
colonies would not pay. It would be very silly for Germany 
to try to get any British colonies. She would be sorely dis- 
appointed if she seized them, and as for England it would 
be no great loss if they disappeared. "How grossly erroneous 
. . . (is) the common jargon . . . that the 'loss' of her 
colonies is going to involve Great Britain in ruin, and that 
the 'conquest' of her colonies is going to achieve for the 
conqueror some mysterious advantage which the present 
owner has never been able to secure !" 1 (G. I., p. 129.) 

Equally futile and non-profitable is the idea that there 
are moral heroisms or any other compensating non-material 
advantages through war. Theodore Roosevelt had spoken in 
favor of "the stern strife of actual life" for nations as well 
as for individuals, when a righteous case called for it. 
Charles Kingsley had praised "a just war against tyrants 
and oppressors." Ernest Renan (quite a different genius!) 
had written that "man is only sustained by effort and strug- 
gle [in national no less than individual affairs]." (G. I., 
pp. 153-55.) "Norman Angell" is under no such "grave 
misconception." The author drew his analogy for the quali- 
ties of soldiers from those which made good vikings and 
pirates. 

"We owe a great deal to the viking," wrote this English- 
man (p. 275), four years only before the best and bravest 
of his countrymen with their comrades of France were going 
forth to give their lives that London and Paris might not 
suffer the fate of Liege and Louvain, but the race was out- 
growing that juvenile stage when vikings and pirates could 

i In his 1910 English edition Mr. Lane kindly informed his British 
readers that in his German editions he had entered into this point at 
greater length than for them, because Germans somehow labored under 
the delusion that colonies were sometimes worth while. — T have not 
seen this German edition. Did the author tell an intelligent Teutonic 
audience that the possession of India had been of no economic advantage 
to England, or of Java to Holland? 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 473 

be heroes. Therefore we are " quite prepared to give the 
soldier his due place in poetry and legend and romance,' ' 
but we "are nevertheless inguiring whether the time has not 
come to place him [the soldier], or a good portion of him, 
gently on the poetic shelf with the viking; or at least -find 
other fields for those activities . . . which have in their 
present form little place in the world." (G. L, pp. 277-78.) x 

The above are samples of the philosophy and conclusions of 
a book that in its hour was read as a new evangel by amiable 
women, and concerning which spectacled professors wagged 
their heads respectfully in their lectures as demonstrating 
great discoveries as of a new economic Columbus. 

With these opinions, it is not strange that Mr. Lane makes 
short and bitter work of those who fail to believe that na- 
tions should live by bread alone. The American Admiral 
Mahan had written: "Like individuals, nations and empires 
have souls as well as bodies. Great and beneficent achieve- 
ments minister to worthier contentment than the filling of 
the pocket. ' ' This sentiment the Englishman quotes, to make 
the retort: "Have we not come to realize that this is all 
moonshine and very mischievous moonshine?" (G. I., p. 309) 
and more in like strain. 2 One of his own countrymen, Mr. 
Blatchford, had written a clear opinion about certain things 

i At this moment, when the writer is bidding God-speed to very many 
stalwart, high-souled young men, his students, sending them forth 
from their studies to the training camps and to the more immediate 
armed service of embattled America, it is impossible to resist the state- 
ment that the above sentence, putting the soldier in a just cause on a 
level with the freebooter, represents one of the most unhappy and per- 
verted sentiments ever expressed in the English language. 

''Norman Angell" seems to have stood to these outrageous opinions 
in 1914 even after the outbreak of the Great War (Prussianism and Its 
Destruction, pp. 230-31). 

^ When I was in Germany a few weeks before the outbreak of hos- 
tilities in 1914, intelligent Germans asked me about the acceptance of 
"Angell's" books in England, — did they represent the point of view of 
most Englishmen, were many copies sold, how far were they received 
in America, etc., etc.? It may be honestly stated that "The Great 
Illusion" probably aided to create one "great illusion" — namely, the be- 
lief which very many responsible Germans hugged up to the end — that 
England would not fight! 



474 THE EOOTS OF THE WAR 

as he saw them: "Germany is deliberately preparing to 
destroy the British empire. . . . The German nation is 
homogeneous, organized. Their imperial policy is continu- 
ous, their rulers work strenuously, sleeplessly, silently. Their 
principle is the theory of blood and iron." Upon which Mr. 
"Angell" freed himself thus — "It would be difficult to pack 
a more dangerous untruth into so few lines. What are the 
facts?'' etc., etc., (p. 301). He was indeed willing to reach 
the grudging conclusion that under existing conditions it was 
useless to plead for immediate disarmament, but some of his 
confident assertions make marvellous reading a few years 
after they were penned, as e.g. his statement: — "Take the 
case of what is reputed, quite wrongly incidentally, to be the 
most military nation in Europe, — Germany. The immense 
majority of adult Germans, — speaking practically, all who 
make up what we know as Germany — have never seen a battle, 
and in all human probability never will." (G. I., p. 190.) 
Apparently he little reckoned on living to see the day when 
current reports would declare that 5,000,000 of those non- 
military Teutons were then mobilized under arms, and that 
4,500,000 of them had already been killed or wounded in 
battle. 

And so he proceeded spinning his pleasant arguments, and 
hiding himself in Merlin's "House of Dreams." 

"Angell" rejoiced in the lime-light of a vast deal of 
correspondence and criticism. It made him and his backers 
very happy when distinguished Englishmen like Mr. Frederic 
Harrison ran a tilt with him in public letters. But the 
excellent gentleman never heard (until much later) of the 
comment made upon his book by the most distinguished critic 
of them all. About six months before the outbreak of the 
Great War, a prominent American lady met His Imperial 
and Royal Highness the Crown Prince Frederick William of 
Germany and Prussia at Naples. She had discovered a 
certain bellicose vein in His Highness and an excessive ad- 
miration for the deeds of Napoleon I. 1 As an antidote she 

i The Napoleon cult was almost an essential part of Pan-Germanism. 
He had indeed been a foe to Prussia, but he had given the Pan-Ger- 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 475 

presented the prince with a copy of Norman Angell's "The 
Great Illusion/' which seeks to prove that war is un- 
profitable." His Highness' answer was brief and pointed. 
"He said that 'whether war was profitable or not, when he 
came to the throne there would be war, if not before, just for 
the fun of it. ' " x It is only just to record that the prince had 
a great advantage over the worthy Mr. Lane in his opportuni- 
ties to translate his ambitions into action. 

Mr. Lane and his fellow-spirits whose name was legion 
continued their brisk activities up to the coming of Arma- 
geddon. On the 31st of July, 1914, when, as will be ex- 
plained (p. 525), English diplomats were making frantic 
endeavors to discover whether Germany would respect the 
neutrality of Belgium and thus save the world from being 
completely changed from an Eden to Gehenna, Mr. Lane 
could see nothing in all the Teutonic schemes that should make 
Englishmen turn in their sleep. In a letter to the London 
"Times" he solemnly pooh-poohed at "the trouble Germany 
would pile up for herself should she attempt the absorption 
of a Belgium, a Holland and a Normandy." To enter the 
impending war would be merely for the promoting of the 
growth of autocratic Russia. "We can best serve civiliza- 
tion, Europe — including France and ourselves, — by remain- 
ing the one power in Europe that has not yielded to the 
war madness. This, I believe, will be found to be the firm 
conviction of the overwhelming majority of the English 
people." 2 

The British chancellory, however, did not feel required to 
ask this gentleman to draft its state papers. Probably Sir 

mans an admirable example of how to discard moral law and to found a 
colossal empire. 

i Gerard's "My Four Years in Germany," p. 96. See note 2, at end of 
chapter: Bernhardi and the Pacifists. 

2 "Norman Angell's" assumption that he understood completely the 
temper of the English people and the egregious misstatements con- 
tained in this letter are typical of the whole pacifist propaganda. He 
may not have known all the confidential facts as to Belgium, but in 
that case he was making sweeping public assertions without possessing 
any proper knowledge. 



476 THE HOOTS OF THE WAR 

Edward Grey and others in the Foreign Office felt that Mr. 
Lane and his numerous compeers had already done the cause 
of peace a disservice simply incalculable. Besides hinting 
to the Pan-Germans that the British people were open to 
the most callow species of arguments, and subordinated na- 
tional security and honor to strictly materialistic con- 
siderations, such presentations naturally tended to increase 
the assurance of the Prussian militarists that in confronting 
Britain they were dealing with a society incapable of large 
sacrifices and sure to knuckle under, the moment it was 
smitten by another nation animated by the spirit of do or 
die. 1 Mr. Lane then could comfort himself that he had at 
least contributed not insignificantly to the bringing to pass 
of the greatest war that ever afflicted the planet, — a fame 
certainly sufficient for many private citizens. 2 

While great peace societies in England and America were 
spending large sums persuading non-Teutonic nations that 
arbitration treaties were cheap and complete substitutes for 
rifles and battle-ships, the government of the French republic 
was spending money also. This money was not being spent 
on peace lectures, but on secret service. It was not spent in 
vain. The German spy system may have been the most com- 
plete in Europe, but it was not without efficient rivals. On 
April 2, 1913, the French minister of war transmitted to 
his colleague the minister for foreign affairs an ''official secret 
report received from a reliable source" of the scheme for 
increasing the German army and the political reasons for the 
same. Neither the men who drafted this report nor the men 
who read it lived in the ' ' House of Dreams. ' ' 

The secret report was dated Berlin, March 19, 1913. It 
set forth that France, England and Russia had obviously 
formed an entente to hem in Germany. The new Balkan 

i And to England must be added France and America ; because the 
same pacifist influences seemed at work in those countries also, using 
similar arguments and seemingly producing similar results. 

2 See note 3 s± end of chapter: Mr. Lane in America, and American 
Pacifism. 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 477 

situation "had lessened the value of the help our ally [Aus- 
tria] could give us." Germany, however, must now make a 
marked increase in her army for "properly ensuring her in- 
fluence in the world. . . . Neither the ridiculous shriekings 
for revenge by French chauvinists, nor the Englishmen's 
gnashing of teeth, nor the wild gestures of the Slavs will turn 
us from our aim of protecting and extending Deutschtum 
[German influence] all the world over." German public 
opinion therefore must be carefully schooled. "We must 
accustom them to think that an offensive war on our part is 
a necessity, in order to combat the provocations of our ad- 
versaries. We must act with prudence so as not to arouse 
suspicion, and to avoid the crises which might injure our 
economic existence. We must so manage matters that under 
the heavy weight of powerful armaments, considerable sacri- 
fices and strained political relations, an outbreak [of war] 
would be considered a relief, because after it would come 
decades of peace and prosperity, as after 1870, We must 
prepare for war from the financial point of view; there is 
much to be done in this direction. We must not arouse the 
distrust of our financiers, but there are many things which 
cannot be concealed." 1 

To win the war, native Mohammedan factions must be 
stirred up against the French in Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, 
and especially against the English in India. The small 
European states must also be looked to : " it will be necessary 
that the small states should be forced to follow us or be sub- 
dued." The Scandinavian lands could perhaps be ignored, 
but a careful policy must be formed as to Holland and espe- 
cially Belgium. If the attitude of Belgium gave "advantages 
to our adversary in the west, we could in no circumstances 
offer Belgium a guarantee for the security of her neutrality." 
Germany must accordingly get ready a strong army to take 

i One gets the decided impression that it was because this financial 
mobilization was incomplete that Germany did not support Austria in 
her more extreme Balkan demands in 1913, and so precipitate a crisis 
in 1913, instead of a year later. The great increase in the German 
gold reserve between 1913 and 1914 would go far to justify this opinion. 



478 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the offensive promptly on the Lower Rhine (opposite Bel- 
gium). "An ultimatum with a short time limit, to be fol- 
lowed immediately by invasion, would allow a sufficient jus- 
tification for our action in international law. ' ' If war comes, 
"we will then remember that the provinces of the ancient 
German Empire, the county of Burgundy and a large part 
of Lorraine are still in the hands of the French: and that 
thousands of brother-Germans in the Baltic provinces of 
Russia are groaning under the Slavic yoke. ' ' x 

A little later (May 6, 1913), M. Jules Cambon, French 
ambassador to Berlin, wrote to his government quoting some 
remarks General von Moltke had made at a German mili- 
tary gathering. "We must put aside," said this high gen- 
eral, "all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the 
aggressor. When war has become necessary it is essential 
to carry it on in such a way as to place all the chances 
in one's own favor. Success alone justifies war." There- 
fore to defeat France before Russia could mobilize, "we 
must anticipate our principal adversary as soon as there are 
nine chances to one of going to war, and begin it without 
delay in order ruthlessly to crush all resistance. ' ' 2 

M. Cambon was a thoroughly reliable diplomat of high integrity, who 
knew what he was reporting. Upon this question of anticipatory wars, 
Moltke might have seen Bismarck's opinion rising up against him; 
although Bismarck himself had not practised strictly his own dictum. 
In his "Reflections and Recollections" (II, 101), the Iron Chancellor 
said, "[I have always been of the] conviction that even victorious wars 
cannot be justified unless they are forced upon one, and that one cannot 
see the cards of Providence far enough ahead to anticipate historical 
development according to one's own calculations." He adds that it 
was very risky to let young military men, in their anxiety to put their 
troops into action, get control so as to menace the nation's peace. 

"But it [the military power] only becomes dangerous under a 
monarch whose policy lacks sense of proportion and power to resist one- 
sided and constitutionally unjustifiable influences." 

The Pan-Germans, however, had long come to consider Bismarck as 
somewhat of an old fogey, who would have been unable to adapt himself 
to the up-to-date demands of the twentieth century. 

i French Official Correspondence on Outbreak of War; Sec. 2. 
2 Ibid, Sec. 3. 



LAST YEARS IN THE POOL'S PARADISE 479 

The bellicose sentiments did not diminish during 1913. 
We have already seen what M. Cambon later reported to 
Paris about the visit to Berlin of the King of Belgium, (p. 
223.) 

In the face of these warnings France, not without reluc- 
tance, but convinced by her military men that refusal would 
menace the national safety, reenacted her law making three 
years, instead of two, the normal term in the army. The 
republic consented to this with a heavy heart, for the 
declining French birth-rate was throwing her sadly behind 
in competition with Germany, and this long diversion of the 
young men to the colors increased the drain on the national 
economic prosperity; but despite pacifist protests and syndi- 
calist threats, the "three year law" went through parliament 
and into the statute book. Also Russia was taking warning. 
Her army was being steadily reorganized after the Japanese 
fiasco. Money borrowed from France was being wisely spread 
out on strategic railways. The handicap in munitions manu- 
factories promised to be overcome. By 1917 it seemed likely 
that the Russian army would be in a state of efficiency par- 
tially corresponding at least to its pretensions and its num- 
bers. As for England, the Liberal ministers were giving no 
sign of building up a formidable army, but they were at least 
taking pains with the fleet. The Liberal ministry, also, by the 
end of 1913 seemed to be not very firm in its saddle. The 
Irish question was threatening its existence. If it was driven 
from power, the Conservatives were considerably more likely 
than their rivals to do something looking toward universal 
military service as well as being, by the traditions of their 
party, somewhat more ready to go to war. The Teutons there- 
fore felt constrained to take cognizance of this situation which 
was not all to their benefit. 

During 1913 and the early part of 1914, German diplomacy, 
however, was markedly more pacific than in the past. There 
was real cooperation between Berlin and London in the ef- 
forts to keep Austria and Russia from shaking down the 
world during several ticklish turns of the Balkan situation. 
England helped the Teutons to create their precious Albania ; 



480 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

the Teutons consented to see Serbia get a great territorial 
expansion by the Treaty of Bucharest. It is therefore rea- 
sonable to assume that part at least of the German statesmen 
had taken honest alarm at the position to which the Pan- 
Germanist propaganda had led them- that on the brink of 
precipitating an incalculable calamity they not unnaturally 
hesitated, and that, too, some of them realized that it 
was the height of blundering to pursue a policy by which 
nations hitherto so discordant as England, France, and, above 
all, Russia should be arrayed as common foes to the Central 
Powers. There is to-day hardly formal evidence but there 
are abundant grounds for assured inference that the Pan- 
Germanists were told by those in high authority that if they 
would conquer the world they must not try to conquer it all 
at one stroke, and that until the German fleet had reached 
it fullest projected development, say by 1920, there was no 
wisdom in deliberately picking a quarrel with England. On 
the contrary, it seemed quite possible to create a Balkan sit- 
uation in which British public opinion would not sustain 
its government for interfering, and a quarrel might be pushed 
home with Russia in which that empire, defeated and humili- 
ated probably along with France, would be compelled to 
gaze hopelessly at a later "reckoning'' in which Britain must 
fight without an ally against victorious and invigorated 
Teutonia. This project was eminently feasible according to 
German diplomatic and military standards. It was a scheme 
in which Berlin could count on the most hearty cooperation 
of Vienna and probably of Turkey, but it was one that would 
have to be executed quickly before the new army reforms in 
Russia and France could be completed. There is cumulative 
and indubitable evidence, in short, that by the beginning of 
1914 Germany had made up her mind to risk precipitating a 
capital war: but all the circumstances of the case indicated 
that she preferred to become mistress of continental Europe 
before aiming to become mistress of the seas. Not on Eng- 
land, but on Russia and devoted France was the first bolt to 
fall. 

It should be recalled that until well after the beginning of the war 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 481 

in 1914 the German navy had developed its submarine service rela- 
tively little, and was undertaking to stake naval issues almost entirely 
on its dreadnaughts. 

Had Bismarck lived and been in control, he would have arranged the 
quarrel, assuming he were determined to have one, so that infallably: 

(I) England would have been isolated from France and Russia and 
in no mood to interfere in a struggle of which the formal rights, under 
international law, Bismarck would have surely secured for the German 
side. 

(II) Italy would have been made to feel it both her duty and her 
opportunity to fight with her Teutonic '•allies." 

But only Bismarck's office, not his mantle of genius, descended on 
Bethmann-Hollweg, Jagow and the other urbane gentlemen in the 
Berlin foreign ministry, who arranged the diplomatic stage in 1914. 

In 1913, without waiting for similar movements in France 
and Russia, a notable increase was authorized by the Reichs- 
tag in the German army. 1 The standing peace-army was to 
be raised from about 720,000 to about 860,000, with a cor- 
responding increase in the reserves. There were to be star- 
tling additions to the new motor-tractor and aircraft services, 
also (as a jealously guarded secret) sundry great mobile 
howitzers were to be manufactured, which could beat the 
best forts to powder. To pay for the huge amount of extra 
equipment needful for this addition, an extraordinary tax 
was levied on capital, the tax being made the more popular by 
being laid upon noble and princely personages no less than 
on the commonalty. This additional armament was to be 
ready by the fall of 1914, at a time when the new Russian 

i The German government alleged that the new quotas for the army 
were simply to match corresponding increases in France and Russia. 
As a matter of fact the German increases were first formulated in 
November, 1912, openly discussed in January, 1913, and became a law 
June 30, 1914. The French increases were formulated in February, 
1913 (after great alarm over the situation in Germany) and only be- 
came a law July 19, of that year. The Russian increases were not even 
formulated until March, 1913, when the new German programme was 
patent to all the world. 

The "defensive" character of the German measures can be judged from 
the statement on June 28, 1913, in the semi-official "Kolnisehe Zeitung": 
"This security gives us a free road to a profitable world policy. We are 
as yet but at the starting-point. Long roads, full of promise, open be- 
fore us in Asia and in Africa." 



482 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

preparations at least would be toiling far behind. The new 
strategic railways parallel with the Belgian and Polish fron- 
tiers were in good order: and Prussian card-catalog efficiency 
had worked out every possible detail for a military effort 
beside which that of Moltke and Roon in 1870 would seem 
but as children's play. — What sane militarist would wait, 
while the Fatherland declined from this top-notch of effi- 
ciency, while Russia and France completed their deliberate 
reforms, and while England at last listened to Lord Roberts ? 

The completeness of the German preparation has thus been summed 
up admirably by a distinguished French writer (Louis Madelin, "The 
Victory of the Marne," English trans., p. 11) : 

"For forty-three years the conquerors of Sadowa and Sedan had con- 
centrated all their time and efforts upon the forging of the most formid- 
able weapons that a nation ever used against her enemies. They pos- 
sessed everything that science and wealth had at the disposal of war, 
the largest mortars and the most deadly gases, Zeppelins for war in 
the air, armorclads and submarines for war on the seas, every possible 
weapon, known or unknown, legitimate or otherwise, perfected and in 
huge quantities. They had secretly accumulated a treasure for war. 
They thought that they alone possessed the secrets of strategy and tac- 
tics, for the rawest German captain fancied himself a past master in 
all those arts far more than our greatest generals. And above all they 
could depend on the iron discipline of their army and the grim patriot- 
ism of a military nation." 

When after the return of peace and the calming of passions 
the official papers are all printed, the " lives and letters" of 
prominent statesmen are written and the ' * confidential' ' in- 
structions become confidential no longer, ten thousand inter- 
esting things will see the light : but among the most interest- 
ing will be the exchange of opinions between Berlin and 
Vienna during the year before the great catastrophe. Aus- 
tria had no great interest in a war for Germany's benefit 
against England or even France, but she was intensely anxious 
to extend her grip upon the Balkans and hold back Russia 
and especially to break up the new power of Serbia. On 
August 9th, 1913, the day before the signing of the Treaty 
of Bucharest, Austria had informed Italy and Germany of 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 483 

her "intention of taking action against Serbia" and her 
hopes that her allies would support her in a "defensive" war. 
Italy promptly negatived the proposition, and the scheme was 
as promptly dropped. 1 Surely not only because Italy ob- 
jected. Austria undoubtedly was told also by her major ally 
that Germany was not yet quite ready to have her throw 
down the gauntlet to Russia. But Austria did not abandon 
her intentions, nor did Germany ask her to do this. ' ' Serbia 
had committed two unpardonable crimes: she had strength- 
ened the barrier between Austria and Saloniki, and she had 
enormously enhanced her own prestige as the representative 
of South Slav aspirations. Serbia must be annihilated. ' ' 2 
The field was therefore open for all those violent schemes, in- 
trigues and dark doings which men of Southeastern Europe 
love so well. 

Truth to tell, the Serbs gave plenty of formal provocation 
to their enemies. There was a constant infiltration of anti- 
Austrian propaganda and propagandists over the boundary 
from Serbia into Bosnia. The Bosniaks were incited to re- 
sist Austrian officialdom at every possible turn, and officialdom 
reacted with "police measures" which easily degenerated 
into plain tyranny. Bosnia was full of turmoil and passive 

i Speech by Signor Giolitti, in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Dec. 
5, 1914, quoting a telegram to him from the Marquis di San Giuliano, 
Italian foreign minister in 1913. 

2 Marriott's "The Eastern Question," p. 418. In January, 1918, the 
Berlin "Tageblatt" carried a statement by Prince Lichnowsky, am- 
bassador to England in 1914, which practically destroys any claim that 
Teutonism did not force the war over Serbia. The Prince bluntly ad- 
mitted that "a wide interpretation of the alliance with Austria per- 
mitted our Austro-Magyar friends, with our [German] help to combat 
Serbian strivings for unity which were supported by Russia." . . . 
Austria felt it very needful to prevent Serbia from reaching the sea, 
even by merely a friendly understanding with Greece as to the use of 
Saloniki. "When finally Count JBerchtold [Austrian foreign minister], 
who had never really recognized the peace of Bucharest, was proceed- 
ing, supported by Germany, to revise the Bucharest treaty, the world 
war developed out of the resistance offered by Russia "... After this 
authoritative statement what use of pretending that the murder of the 
Archduke caused the war? 



484 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

(or active!) resistance over school questions, press questions, 
language questions, taxation questions, and almost everything 
else. A powerful Pan-Serbian society, the "Narodna Od- 
brana," with its headquarters in Belgrade, devoted its con- 
centrated energies to make the Bosniaks hate the Austrians 
and to make the Serbs gird their loins for the hour when a 
sudden blow would dissolve the Austrian conglomerate, and 
Bosnia would join itself to its own kinsmen in Serbia, now 
also to be united with Montenegro. The Serbian press, 
violent and irresponsible, teemed with offensive anti-Austrian 
articles. In short, Serbian methods, the methods of a small, 
imperfectly civilized people which had been grievously op- 
pressed, were not nice, and thus gave the more polished gen- 
tlemen at Vienna plenty of formal reasons for writing notes 
and talking of drastic action. 

And then from clear heaven came a gift of the gods ! An 
outrageous crime, which shocked the world, which gave the 
Austrians ample excuse in their own eyes for picking a quar- 
rel with Serbia: which gave the Pan-Germans equal excuse 
also to their own people for supporting Austria in case the 
quarrel should take in Russia. So singularly fortunate a 
happening could hardly have been imagined by the war-lords 
around the Hohenzollern and the Hapsburg. 

Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia, was a picturesque, semi- 
oriental city of about 37,700 people, mostly Serbs or Croa- 
tians, with a colony of Jews. It was a very interesting place 
to tourists with its Turkish bazaar, numerous mosques, 1 
wooden houses and cypress groves. "Howling" and "danc- 
ing" Moslem dervishes still gesticulated in their monastery, 
and there were numerous oriental baths and cafes. There 
were pretentious Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals, and the 
"" three religions" dwelt together in this little city in reason- 
able harmony. The sympathies of many of the Christian 
Slavs were strongly "Pan-Serbian" however. It was, in 
short, a place which the Austrian government felt required to 
keep under careful watch and ward. 

Hither on June 28, 1914, came His Imperial Highness the 

i Very many of the Bosniak Serbs were of course Mohammedans. 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 485 

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Austria, along 
with his consort the Duchess of Hohenburg, 1 upon a visit of 
state and ceremony. The archduke was not popular with 
many elements in the Austrian empire. He was alleged to 
have entertained a scheme for raising the Slavs among his 
subjects to a kind of federalized equality with the Germans 
and the Magyars — a proposition that earned him the wrath 
of the leaders of those two predominant races. He was, how- 
ever, extremely unpopular with the Pan-Serbists : mainly be- 
cause his project would have put an end to any idea of ever 
ruling Bosnia from Belgrade. There is some reason for feel- 
ing that certain influential personages in Austria realized 
that the archduke's visit to Serajevo was likely to be perilous, 
and that they did not nevertheless order any very efficient 
police measure to protect him. The dark skeins in Balkan 
history are innumerable and to-day it is impossible to untangle 
this one. 2 One fact, however, is certain. The news of the 
death of Franz Ferdinand did not leave certain influential 
politicians at Vienna and Buda-Pesth bowed with anguish: 
all other surmises are unsafe. 

Whoever was ultimately to blame, General Potiorek, the 
local governor and army commandant, provided neither 
proper police nor military escort for the archduke's auto- 
mobile as it went through the streets of Serajevo. As the 
imperial visitors proceeded from the station a bomb was un- 
successfully thrown at the car by the son of an Austrian 
police official. On arriving at the Town Hall the archduke 
is said to have exclaimed, "Now I know why Count Tisza ad- 
vised me to postpone my journey." Still police precautions 
were not redoubled. The princely couple now left the Town 
Hall to pass through the city. On the way the archduke and 
his wife were mortally wounded in broad daylight by three 

i The archduke had married beneath his station by taking the hand 
of the Countess Sophie Chotek. She had been refused elevation to the 
rank of "Imperial Highness" by the irate old Kaiser Franz Josef. It 
was said, however, that the archduke was full of schemes whereby the 
two sons she bore him could be placed in succession to the throne. 

i-' For a discussion of all that can be reasonably guessed on the subject, 
gee Evans Lewin, "The German Road to the East," pp, 223-230, 



486 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

pistol shots from a second assassin. The murderer was a 
wretched Bosniak youth of South Slav blood but a subject 
of Austria and not a Serbian citizen. The archduke in his 
last moments is reported to have had his fearful surmises as 
to why he had been left unguarded. "The fellow," he 
gasped, "will get the Golden Cross of Merit" (a high Aus- 
trian order) "for this." The mystery will probably never 
be cleared up. It is a fact, however, that no high officials 
were demoted or punished for at best criminal carelessness 
in failing to guard the archduke, in a city where it was notori- 
ous that thousands of Bosniaks and Pan-Serbists hated him. 
It is also a fact that his funeral was extraordinarily hurried, 
mean, and without the pomp worthy of the heir of the Haps- 
burgs. 

Of course the crime was execrated throughout Europe. 
The British parliament passed resolutions of sympathy for 
the aged and bereaved emperor of Austria. The feeling was 
general that Serbia had failed to curb a criminal agitation 
within her borders, and that Austria would be justified in 
bringing her roundly to time and forcing her to halt various 
Pan-Serbist societies as well, of course, as to bring to justice 
any possible Serbian instigators of the Bosniak criminals. 
In diplomatic circles this was believed to be likely to be ac- 
complished in a moderate and decent way. There seemed 
no menace to the peace of Europe. Britain was desperately 
absorbed in her eternal Irish question, which now at last ap- 
peared about to blaze out in civil war. France was racked by 
a sordid personal scandal and a public trial centering around 
one of her most prominent politicians. Russia seemed also 
preoccupied by various industrial troubles. Kaiser Wilhelm 
departed upon a yachting trip among his favorite Norwegian 
fjords. Most of the various ambassadors left the capitals to 
go on vacations. The Austrian newspapers, denunciatory of 
Serbia at first, soon became admirably calm. The Rhine- 
lands, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Italy were over- 
run with more than the ordinary number of American and 
English tourists, snapping cameras and buying post-cards. 
The guides at The Hague did a thriving business exhibiting 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 487 

the famous " Peace Palace," which was no doubt putting all 
the munition factories out of business. 
Then came the 23rd of July. 

RALPH NORMAN ANGELL LANE AND HIS BOOK IN INDIA 

The original name of this gentleman seems to have been Mr. Ralph 
Norman Angell Lane, but after the fashion of sundry fiction-mongers and 
actresses he apparently desired to change his name, and he usually 
appeared in print and on the lecture platform as "Norman Angell," 
He was an Englishman, who had spent part of his younger days in 
America, and he claimed American citizenship: he seems nevertheless to 
have liked to present himself impartially and alternately as a Briton 
and an American according to the country in which he was proffering 
gratuitous counsel upon its foreign questions. His standing address 
however appears to have been London. 

Besides the numerous European cities in which the "Great Illusion" 
was caused to "appear simultaneously" with great nourish of trumpets, 
editions seem to have been published in Japan, China, and in five Brit- 
ish Indian dialects. "Norman Angell" was of course a perfectly sincere 
pacifist who would have been horrified at the suggestion of giving even 
the most indirect assistance to Pan-German schemes. It is a fact 
however that his book, by creating an impression that representative 
Englishmen regarded colonies of little value, and therefore to be easily 
relinquished, was well calculated to promote that unrest and disaffec- 
tion towards Britain in India, which there is evidence enough the 
Pan-Germans regarded with profound complacency. One becomes a bit 
curious as to the original financial sources for the publication of these 
Hindu editions. Of course Mr. Lane was wholly innocent of any dis- 
tasteful uses to which this book might be put. 

Recent neutrality trials in America have shown the great interest 
the German propagandists took in Indian affairs and their willingness 
to resort to even the most far-fetched and indirect weapons. 

BERNHARDI AND THE PACIFISTS 

One cannot read through "The Great Illusion" and then Bernhardi's 
"Germany and the Next War" without feeling that, in everything save 
bloodless humanitarianism, the German is, as a practical philosopher, 
superior, — more candid with himself, more willing to face disagreeable 
facts as he sees them, more willing to accept the logical consequences 
of his philosophy, more willing to uphold a heroic and non-sordid 
standard for his countrymen, more willing to tell them plainly that 
they must be ready for great material and spiritual sacrifices in behalf 
of those things which mighty nations are wont to hold dear. 

To-day one rises from reading a mass of antebellum Pan-Germanist 



488 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

tracts with sentiments of wrath, but from a similar volume of Anglo- 
American pacifist literature simply with disgust 

The Pan-German had all the crude, headlong valor of the desert lien. 
His contemporary, the professional pacifist, exhibited all the traits of 
the desert ostrich. The latter animal, with his head in the sand, has 
never been counted the king of beasts. 

MR. LANE IN AMERICA, AND AMERICAN PACIFISM 

After the outbreak of the war Mr. Lane, finding his countrymen be- 
coming chilly to his preachments, withdrew to America. During the 
earlier stages of our •"preparedness" movement he is alleged to have 
done yeoman service in haggling at the effort for a better American 
army and navy: — eg at the "Lake Mohonk Conference," May 20, 1915, 
two weeks after the sinking of the Lusitania he is reported to have 
taken violent issue with the views of Secretary of War Garrison and 
other responsible officials of the United States Government. "Mr. Angell 
[Lane] fairly ran to the speaker's stand to make his reply," stated the 
New York "Times." 

Later in 1915, having caught the stride of American opinion, he ap- 
parently modified his opposition to preparedness. On November 11, 
1915, he is alleged to have predicted that we would "probably" have 
war with Japan. (N. Y. "Times." Nov. 12, 1915) At last, having 
seemingly exhausted the round of the uplift societies and the patronage 
of the peace propagandists, he took himself back to the land of his 
birth. He was, it would seem, in England when in 1917 America no less 
than Britain repudiated his materialistic gospel of 1910 and entered 
the great war, not to win sordid profits but to redeem her soul. 

When crossing the Atlantic in the spring of 1914 the present writer 
found on his steamer an estimable clergyman from a small city in 
Ohio. The good man was on his way to attend an unofficial peace-con- 
ference to be held, as I recall, in Brussels. 

"We have seen our last war," my excellent friend liked to declare, and 
when we passed a British cruiser he denounced the vessel as "one of the 
most absolutely useless things in the world"! All ideas of armed con- 
flict were merely "wicked imaginings, for it was impossible to believe 
that Providence could allow such fearful things to happen again." 

In his steamer chair my friend read not light novels, but Mr. Lane's 
"The Great Illusion" and sundry writings by American pacifists which 
squared the international circle with equal erudition, but which are 
now of merely archaeological interest. 

In conversation, this gentleman exhibited a complete ignorance of the 
most ordinary events and problems of European history, but he was 
entirely ready to offer panaceas for all the international ills of the 
old world and the new. He was, of course, an American and had the 
American privilege of snap judgments on perfectly strange questions, 
but many of his English contemporaries were hardly better. I well 



LAST YEARS IN THE FOOL'S PARADISE 489 

recall in 1912 a crowded parlor in a large hotel at Ilfracombe, England, 
where, to a typical "middle class" audience, a popular lecturer for the 
peace interests demonstrated with mathematical certainty that war 
between England and Germany was an absolute impossibility, and that 
those who made serious preparation for it were fools as well as knaves. 
This particular worthy commended the diffusion of "Esperanto" as the 
cure-all for international ills. 

I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of these two gentlemen 
nor of most of their fellow-workers, but the service such good souls un- 
consciously rendered to Pan-Germanism is not to be computed in dol- 
lars, pounds, — or marks. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

SOWING THE WIND — THE SERBIAN NOTE 1 

ON July 25, 1914, the London "Spectator/' a periodical 
by no means pacihstic, and one that frequently spoke 
of the "German danger,"' began its front-page news sum- 
mary thus : ' ' The news of the week which eclipses all others 
in interest and importance is the meeting of the Conference 
of political leaders which assembled [to consider the Irish 
question] at Buckingham palace on Thursday, and is sitting 
as we write." On the third page there was a vague state- 
ment that a serious situation existed between Serbia and 
Austria, and that Austria had sent a note "whereof the 
language was exceedingly emphatic." On the fifth page was 
a somewhat perfunctory editorial which said that the tension 
between Austria and Serbia appeared extreme, but "even 
if things look blacker than they do now ... we cannot be- 
lieve Franz Josef will let his government go to war,'' and 
scoffed at the idea of any but a peaceful solution to the 
crisis. 

Two weeks later this same periodical was telling its readers 
that the great European war, "so often predicted," had come 
to pass, and was discussing the strategy and tactics of the 
generals and admirals. 

As a matter of fact, the war cloud first really gathered on 
July 23rd. It broke with complete fury on August 4th. 
What had happened in the interval? These twelve days 
comprise one of the most fearful and memorable fortnights 
in universal history. 

i The numerous quotations in this and the following chapter are 
nearly all from the various official "books" of diplomatic correspondence 
published by the belligerent governments at the outbreak of the war. 
These "books" are so well known that specific references have seemed 
pedantic and superfluous. 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 491 

Until the German government shall open its private ar- 
chives, it is impossible to trace the details of events between 
June 29th and July 23rd, 1914. But there seems to be ab- 
solutely reliable evidence that early in July a great state 
council was held at which it was determined to precipitate 
war just as soon as possible, or else to inflict upon Russia 
such a diplomatic humiliation as would shake her whole 
prestige and position as a great power, and as a result es- 
tablish the Teutonic empires as the resistless dominators of 
the Balkans. Shortly after the outbreak of actual hostilities, 
Baron Wangenheim, the German ambassador at Constan- 
tinople, in an outburst of enthusiasm over the early successes 
of his country, made a statement to his colleague, Mr. Mor- 
genthau, the American ambassador to Turkey: "The Ger- 
man ambassador informed me [Morgenthau] that a confer- 
ence had been held in the early part of July [1914] at which 
the date of the war was fixed. This conference was pre- 
sided over by the Kaiser : Baron Wangenheim was present to 
report on conditions in Turkey. Moltke, the Chief of Staff, 
was there, and so was Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. With 
them were the leaders of German finance, the directors of the 
railroads, and the captains of industry. . . . Each was asked 
if he were ready for the war. All replied in the affirmative, 
except the financiers, who insisted that they must have two 
weeks in which to sell foreign securities and arrange their 
loans." His Excellency the Baron seems to have told the 
same story also to his colleague the Italian ambassador to 
Constantinople. There is not the least reason to doubt that 
this tale is substantially true. 1 

After the Great War began, all the governments interested 
issued collections of "papers," diplomatic correspondence be- 
tween foreign ministers and envoys, setting forth how the 
disaster came about and of course absolving the country issu- 
ing the particular "book" from guilt or blame. These 
"papers" possess enormous interest and importance. The 
fullest of them are incomplete. Even the ones that seem 

i See end of chapter : note on The Precipitation of the War by 
Germany. 



492 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

most straightforward contain obvious omissions. They of 
course give only a minor fraction of the whole vast story. 
But taken in the aggregate (and they till in all two large 
volumes), they constitute an interlocking record of these 
terrible Twelve Days, such as makes quite sufficient evidence 
for the jury "in the court of civilization." Men go to the 
gallows every day from competent criminal courts on testi- 
mony far less complete than that in the ponderous "Diplo- 
matic Documents relating to the Outbreak of the European 
War. ' ' x One does not therefore feel obliged to wait half 
a century before calling a spade a spade. From the outset 
of the great struggle in Europe, the analysis of this official 
evidence has been keen and ardent: and the conclusion has 
already been accepted in almost every civilized land save 
those dominated by Teutonism, as proving that Germany and 
Austria between them, prime-mover and supple accomplice, 
precipitated Armageddon to serve their own aggressive ends. 
It is superfluity therefore to give a new analysis of the 
documents, when to have any original probative value, that 
analysis ought to be very searching and complete. There 
is some value, however, in giving a bald recital of the prin- 
cipal happenings on each one of these terrible days, that one 
may see precisely how the torch was finally applied to the 
magazine. This cursory treatment becomes all the more 
justifiable if the earlier part of this book has carried any 
conviction as to its main thesis — that the Pan-Germanists had 
gained control of the wills and purposes of the disposing per- 
sonages in the Teutonic empires and had already prepared 
the magazines of explosives which now took fire. Woe unto 
the reckless fool who willfully kindles the flame that will 
cause the indescribable explosion. Greater woe unto the 
supposedly sane man who deliberately prepares the combusti- 
bles where he well knows the spark may fall. Greatest woe 

i The most complete edition is in two large volumes issued by the 
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International 
Law": 1916. This arm of the peace movement kept itself honorably 
clear of certain pacifist proceedings which seem to have fitted in well 
with Pan-German policy. 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 493 

of all to the offender if he who has cheerfully prepared the 
powder as cheerfully also brings near the spark! 

July 23, 1914, announced the approach of "The Day." 
Upon it was unmasked the first deliberate step in the attempt 
to found a second "Roman" Empire. 

At six o'clock on the balmy summer evening of "The 
Day," when the cafes of Belgrade were full of peaceful 
citizens over their sugar-water and syrupy Turkish coffee, 
when the market had broken up and the Serbian peasant 
women were trudging back to the villages with the gains from 
their chickens and cabbages, and when the band was playing 
in the beautiful gardens overlooking the Danube, His Excel- 
lency, Freiherr von Giesl, the minister of Austria, presented 
himself at the office of M. Patchou, the Serbian minister of 
finance. He did not go to the Serbian foreign ministry be- 
cause M. Pashitch, the premier, who also handled foreign 
matters, was absent from the little capital : and the Austrian 
minister's business seemed urgent: so urgent indeed that he 
could not wait although nearly all the Serbian cabinet was 
away from Belgrade electioneering in view of the coming 
choice of a new chamber of deputies. Freiherr von Giesl 
presented an official document and added verbally that he was 
under orders that "if the note was not accepted integrally 
within forty-eight hours, he was to leave Belgrade with the 
staff of the legation." 

M. Patchou was so agitated when he read the document 
that he at once telegraphed for all his colleagues to come back 
to Belgrade, and also got in touch with the Russian charge 
d'affaires. He informed the latter "that he solicited the 
help of Russia, for no Serbian government could accept the 
demands of Austria." The next morning the wires not 
merely from Belgrade but from Berlin, Vienna, St. Peters- 
burg, Paris, London and Rome were overladen with the mes- 
sages of excited diplomats, and M. Sazonof, the czar's minister 
for foreign affairs, was issuing a frantic appeal for moderat- 
ing counsels whereby "to prevent consequences, incalculable 
and equally fatal for all the powers." Obviously the good 



494 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Yon Giesl had had the honor of delivering a somewhat mo- 
mentous document. The "Serbian note" had been thrust 
upon the world. 1 

The Austrian note to Serbia will remain a famous docu- 
ment hundreds of years after the millions who first read 
it have mouldered in their graves. It marks the end of one 
era in the world's history, the beginning of yet another. The 
French Revolution is commonly held to fairly begin with the 
fall of the Bastile. A revolution in the polity and economy of 
the entire world was undoubtedly to begin with the delivery 
of that typewritten paper by the peaceful-looking Freiherr 
von Giesl. 

The document was instantly recognized as charged with 
dynamite. It recited the sins of the Serbian government in 
failing to check the unfriendly and obnoxious Pan-Serbist 
agitation, called on the Serbian government to make formal 
repudiation of the same in its "official journal/ ' then added 
ten categorical demands whereof the substance was that King 
Peter's ministers forthwith promise to suppress every paper 
"inciting to hatred and contempt" of Austria, 'to dissolve 
the Pan-Serbist society, the Narodna Odbrana, and all similar 

i The question arises, — why, if Germany and her Austrian accomplice 
were bent on war, they went to any trouble to fish up a pretext, and 
indulge in twelve days of diplomatic stress? The answer is that domi- 
nant as were Pan-German influences around William II, they were by 
no means so strong in the empire at large, that the conscience of the 
German nation would have supported heartily the necessary sacrifices of 
a war which the dullest minds could perceive had been wantonly pro- 
voked, and in which the whole empire was asked to bleed for the selfish 
aggrandizement of the not always popular junker class. The nation 
had been sufficiently drugged so that a flimsy pretext might suffice, more 
flimsy than in almost any other great country: but a certain pretext 
there had to be. Besides, a sop had also to be cast to neutral opinion, 
especially to England, if she was expected to keep out of the struggle. 

It may also be added that around the Kaiser were doubtless influential 
men of a somewhat moderate caste, who sincerely preferred a great 
diplomatic advantage for Teutonic influence in the Balkans (as the 
humiliation of Serbia would have been) to the more perilous joys of 
a capital war, certainly involving Russia and France. They were 
willing to take great risks of war, but they accepted peace if they 
could reap enormous advantages. 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 495 

societies, to dismiss from the Serbian public service all mili- 
tary and civil officers ' ' guilty of propaganda against Austria 
whose names and deeds the Austrian government reserved to 
itself the right of communicating", (i. e. without letting Serbia 
satisfy itself of their guilt), "to' accept the collaboration in 
Serbia of representatives of the Austrian government""* to 
help put down the anti- Austrian propaganda," to prosecute the 
accessories in Serbia to the plot against the archduke, in the 
investigation of .which delegates of the Austrian government 
will take part, to arrest two Serbian officials who had been 
implicated by the trial at Serajevo, and to put a stop to the 
smuggling of arms from Serbia into Bosnia. 

But the most deadly sting of this scorpion was in the tail. 
"The Austrian government expects the reply of the royal 
[Serbian] government at the latest by 6 o'clock on Saturday 
evening, the 25th of July." 

Any person with a smattering of international law knew 
that Serbia could not assent to the demands that Austrian 
officials should enter the country to sit in judgment on 
Serbian subjects (whose guilt seemed assumed in advance) 
without withdrawing King Peter's kingdom automatically 
from the list of self-respecting and independent countries. 
From the outset the diplomats who read this note knew one 
or two things to be true: either the Vienna foreign office 
assumed the Serbians to be veritable rabbits ready to barter 
soul and honor for safety, or Vienna wished for nothing but 
war. And only forty-eight hours were left to Serbia to' 
decide either to sign away her national independence, or 
engage in a deadly struggle against hopeless odds; — unless 
Russia stirred. Then the South Slav cried to the North Slav, 
and he did not cry in vain. 

During the terrible Twelve Days which were to follow a 
large number of diplomats were to sign dispatches that will 
live long in history, but of course certain figures played the 
greater parts. In St. Petersburg it was M, Sazonof, the 
reasonable and moderate foreign minister, one of the really 
capable men whom Nicholas II, with all his faults, con- 
trived to enroll in his service. In Vienna it was Count 



496 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Berchtold, Franz Josef's foreign minister, bent on a snug 
little war with Serbia at almost all hazards, but perhaps 
not so anxious as his compeers at Berlin to bring to pass 
the universal "Day." At Berlin it was (on the surface) 
the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and his smooth foreign 
secretary Yon Jagow, speaking "peace" with their lips and 
yet somehow always rejecting any effective proposition for en- 
suring it. At Paris there was at first merely an acting for- 
eign minister, because President Poincare and Premier and 
Foreign Minister Viviani were on a battleship returning from 
a visit to Russia, and then it was those gentlemen themselves. 
At London it was above all else the secretary of state for 
foreign affairs, Sir Edward Gre}% one of the ablest members 
of the Liberal cabinet, accounted an honest lover of peace 
through fair dealing, and a high-minded gentleman of the 
best British type, who refused down to the last minute to 
account the case desperate so long as an honorable expedient 
remained untested. And at every one of the capitals there 
were of course also the care-laden ambassadors, haunting 
the anterooms of the foreign ministers, and keeping the 
wires hot with their hourly messages homeward. 

One great European power plays only a minor part amid 
all this mounting in hot haste. Italy was nominally the 
ally of Austria and of Germany. But the Teutonic empires 
had not deigned to notify her in advance of their intentions, 
nor to take her in the least into their confidence. She was 
left to guess at their intentions with the rest. Her states- 
men raised their voices for peace along with those of the 
Triple Entente, but for the nonce they were helpless wit- 
nesses, not participants, of the mighty things coming to pass. 1 

On the morning of July 24th, the various Austrian em- 
bassies communicated the instantly famous "note" to the 
foreign offices of the other powers and cheerfully awaited 
results. The delivery of the note at Belgrade had been devil- 

i The moment Germany delivered her ultimatum to Russia and 
France, Italy announced that she considered German intentions aggres- 
sive not defensive, and that consequently she was not bound by the 
Triple Alliance and would stand neutral. (Aug. 1, 1914.) 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 497 

ishly well-timed. Nominally forty-eight hours of grace were 
given. Actually by delivering the document at 6 p. m., it 
was the next morning before the various foreign ministers 
would have real opportunity to digest the same. It was 
well on toward noon of the 24th before the forces interested 
in preserving peace could begin their activities: of the "forty- 
eight" hours graciously provided, seventeen or even eighteen 
were thus gone. 

One of Sir Edward Grey's first comments was: "I had 
never seen one state address to another independent state 
a document of so formidable a character": he added that 
the demand to send Austrian officials into Serbia was sub- 
versive of Serbian independence. At St. Petersburg, M. 
Sazonof met in haste with the French and English ambassa- 
dors. His diagnosis of the case was expert and speedy. 
"Austria's conduct was both provocative and immoral. She 
would never have taken such action unless Germany had 
first been consulted." Sazonof now begged of Great Britain 
that she declare that in case of war she would fight beside 
Russia and France. The latter was bound by firm treaty to 
Russia in any case, but England only by an informal 
"entente" for diplomatic cooperation. If the Teutons, how- 
ever, were sure they would have to fight England also they 
might recede. The British ambassador and Grey in London 
could not, however, give a binding engagement as to this. 
English public opinion would never sanction a war which 
seemed primarily to defend Serbia and Russia. All that 
London could then promise was to put pressure on Berlin and 
Vienna to keep the peace: and this pledge was most vigor- 
ously fulfilled. 

Meantime in Austria the Russian ambassador was hasten- 
ing back from his vacation by fast train to Vienna. In his 
stead the Russian charge was presenting an urgent request 
that Austria extend her forty-eight hour time limit for 
Serbia, to see if some outlet could not be arranged from a 
black situation. "He was very coldly received," the Vienna 
and Berlin papers reported gleefully : and in fact his request 
was absolutely disregarded. And so night fell upon the 



498 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

world with the telegraphers still pounding their keys with 
countless "urgent" diplomatic dispatches. 

On July 25th Sazonof announced that Serbia might evacu- 
ate Belgrade and allow Austria to seize it without fighting. 
Such a move ought to satisfy the pride of Vienna. After | 
that, ' ' Russia would be quite willing to stand aside and leave ' 
the question in the hands of England, France, Germany and 
Italy." He said, however, that if worst came to worst, 
"Russia could not allow Austria to crush Serbia and become 
the predominant power in the Balkan. . . . He did not wish 
to precipitate a conflict, bur^unless Germany could restrain 
Austria the situation could be regarded as desperate." 

Thus at St. Petersburg; while in Belgrade the pressure 
was extreme from all the non-Teutonic powers upon King 
Peter's cabinet to do everything possible to meet the demands 
of Austria. The Serbs were terror-stricken. They knew 
that part of the Austrian demands were justifiable; that the 
Pan-Serbist propaganda had been undeniably unfriendly; 
and that there had been unseemly rejoicings in Belgrade at 
the news of the murder of the archduke. Besides, Serbia had 
been in bad odor in Europe ever since the killing of King 
Alexander. Russia was not anxious for war, and France 
very loath to pour out blood and treasure purely over a 
Balkan squabble. England was still more unwilling. As a 
result the Serbs almost literally fell on their knees. They 
did everything but pawn their national independence. For 
practical purposes they assented to every one of the drastic 
Austrian demands save only those requiring that Austrian 
officials should conduct investigations and trials on Serbian 
soil, and they would accept this so far as it "agrees with 
the principle of international law, with criminal procedure, 
and with good neighborly relations." If Austria was not 
satisfied with this reply Serbia would be glad to refer all 
mooted questions "to the decision of the international tri- 
bunal of The Hague." 1 

1 It took an amazingly long time for professional pacifists in America 
and elsewhere to discover how completely this suggestion was ignored 
by the Teutons: it did not even receive the poor honor of abusive com- 
ment. 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 499 

It was 5 :45 p. m. when this f ormal humiliation of a weak 
nation before a strong one was placed in the hands of 
Von Giesl, the Austrian minister. That noble gentleman evi- 
dently did not feel required to waste much time studying its 
clauses, to see whether under their " evasive " and "unsatis- 
factory" phrases (so the Vienna papers soon announced) 
there might not be terms admitting of accommodation and 
peace. Also little time was wasted telegraphing the docu- 
ment to Vienna and weighinsMJtttterms in Franz Josef's 
cabinet: for practical purpojH Kerbs might just as well 
have flung back brave defiance. " At 6:30 p.m. Freiherr 
von Giesl handed in a note at Belgrade "that not having re- 
ceived a satisfactory answer within the time limit set, he 
was leaving Belgrade with the entire staff of the legation." 
The train containing this "high-born" Austrian soon rumbled 
over the Danube into his own empire. Diplomatic relations 
were broken, and the mobilization of troops opposite the 
Serbian capital and the approach of Austrian river monitors 
indicated that bullets would soon supersede protocols. In 
Buda-Pesth and Vienna there was parading and huzzaing in 
the streets. Serbia was weak and very much hated. It was 
generally felt that Russia would not dare to stir in the face 
of Germany. The short easy war seemed very popular. The 
invasion of Serbia would be merely a promenade. Such 
was the morning and the evening of the second day. 

On the 26th the diplomats somewhat anxiously waited for 
the next move. Breaking friendly relations was not quite 
the same as declaring war. Would it not be possible to limit 
the case to a little harmless "punishment" of Serbia for 
certain unquestioned sins? Sir Edward Grey began moving 
heaven and earth to convene a conference of the ambassadors 
of the four "disinterested" powers (France, Germany, Italy 
and England) at London to find some outlet for the case 
honorable both to Russia and to Austria. Serbia might be 
chastised but surely her national life and honor must be 
spared. To this English proposition Italy and France agreed 
promptly and gladly: but Von Jagow at Berlin at once 
raised difficulties. Russia and Austria had better fail to 



500 



THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 



reach a direct understanding 
tervened. So another daj 



so he thought, before others in- 

was lost. 

1 Kaiser suddenly returned from 

d that he came back on his 

est if is Majesty's "return 

The Berlin foreign office 

cellory in Europe. Good 

taking "a more hopeful 

uch was the morning and 




Vienna telegraphed 
the prospect / 
ention would / 



That night 
Norway. Hi 
own initiativ 
cause specula 
was undou 
Herr von J 
view of the %en 
the evening'Tox 

On the 27th the 
that "the country 

of war with Serbia : and its^fJi^Jonement 
undoubtedly be a great disappointment." Meanwhile Von 
Jagow was still giving smooth words about being willing to 
cooperate with England to get peace, but he was becoming 
painfully vague when it passed to details: in London, how- 
ever, Sir Edward Grey was not vague when he talked with 
the Austrian ambassador. That personage was told clearly 
that his government was taking a terrible risk if it imagined 
it could attack Serbia and still satisfy Russia. If they failed 
in this last "the consequences would be incalculable." The 
case was becoming so bad that the British had not been able 
to disperse their fleet after manoeuvres, and as for Serbia, 
that country had already submitted to "the greatest humilia- 
tion I had ever seen a country undergo"; and it was utterly 
disappointing to have her grovelling answer treated like "a 
blank negative." At St. Petersburg, Sazonof was again say- 
ing that Russia was very willing to let the four "disinter- 
ested powers" get together and decide on what was just un- 
der the premises. From Berlin there came almost no decisive 
sign. Such was the morning and the evening of the fourth 
day. 

On the *28th the situation, which had been drifting from 
hour to hour, with the diplomats hoping that so long as 
actual fighting did not begin there might be an exit, showed 
signs of reaching an issue — but not a peaceful one. Austria 
formally declared war on Serbia. This meant that the situa- 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 501 

tion could not be put back into its old state without formal 
negotiations and a solemn treaty. Soon cannon shots were 
flying across the Danube. Austria was now mobilizing vast 
armies, avowedly to crush feeble Serbia, but on so general 
a scale that it was plain she was getting ready for anything. 
As a natural answer Russia began to mobilize also — not the 
entire hosts of the Czar, but only in the South — a partial 
mobilization to prevent herself from being hamstrung by a 
sudden blow in case it should turn out Austria was not 
mobilizing against Serbia only, and also, it should be fairly 
added, to lend weight to her urgent representations that 
Serbia ought not to be blotted from the list of independent 
nations whatever the justice of her cause. Russia took pains 
to inform Germany that her mobilization was merely partial 
and facing Austria only: and that she did not intend war. 
In fact, the Russian ambassador had orders still to remain 
at Vienna and to work for peace. Meanwhile at Berlin Beth- 
mann-Hollweg was telling the English ambassador that he 
could not consent to a general conference of the powers to 
put pressure on Austria. Russia ought to keep out of the 
quarrel. "From Austria's standpoint, and in this he agreed, 
her quarrel with Serbia was a purely Austrian concern with 
which Russia had nothing to do." If peace was to be kept, it 
was to be by a direct agreement between Vienna and St. 
Petersburg. Almost simultaneous with this interview was 
another at Vienna between Franz Josef's foreign minister 
and the Russian ambassador. The latter was told that no 
accommodation with Russia as to Serbia was possible. The 
ambassador therefore wired St. Petersburg that the Only hope 
of healing the breach was by a conference of the powers: 
which conference was the very thing Bethmann-Hollweg at 
Berlin had just rejected. Such was the morning and the 
evening of the fifth day. 

On July 29th a great change came over the whole situa- 
tion. Hitherto the quarrel had been between Austria and 
Russia as to the right of the latter to interpose in behalf 
of Serbia. Berlin had simply sat back quietly, folded its 
hands and rejected every practical suggestion— especially 



502 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

from England — for averting dire disaster. "The contest must 
be localized": i. e., Austria must be allowed to treat Serbia 
unhindered in her own stern way, — that had been the sub- 
stance of a dozen "conversations" permitted by Von Jagow 
and his superior the Chancellor. 1 Now suddenly Berlin be- 
gan an amazing activity. Was this because William of 
Hohenzollern was constitutionally unable to be the specta- 
tor of any drama when he might personally be an actor? Was 
it because the precise point had been reached when by pre- 
arrangement Germany was to intervene? Both things are 
very likely and by no means incompatible. While France 
and England were still endeavoring frantically to find some 
decent outlet that would save Austria's interests, Serbia's 
life and Russia's honor, while Sir Edward Grey was tele- 
graphing Berlin that if the proposed schemes for concilia- 
tion did not suit, Germany "should suggest any method by 
which the influence of the 'four powers' could be used to 
prevent war between Austria and Russia"; and that Eng- 
land, France and Italy would put the scheme into effect "if 
mine was not acceptable" — while all these things were go- 
ing on, Bethmann-IIollweg had been not at his office on 
the Wilhelmstrasse but with his imperial master at Potsdam 
sixteen miles away. 

There at the old seat of the Hohenzollerns was being held 

1 1 decline, at this late date, to enter into the question whether Ger- 
many had cognizance of the precise text of the Serbian note by Austria. 
The denial by the magnates of the Berlin foreign office that they had 
had advance knowledge of its precise tenor or wording is the denial of 
men concerning whose personal veracity Americans have formed a very 
clear-cut opinion. But in any case the evidence is plain that the Ger- 
man government knew perfectly well that Austria intended to precipi- 
tate a crisis menacing to the peace of Europe, and that it egged on its 
dupe and ally to accomplish its purpose. This is bluntly admitted in 
the German "White Book" issued officially at Berlin at the outbreak of 
the war. "We were perfectly well aware that a possible warlike atti- 
tude of Austria against Serbia might bring Russia into the field, and 
that we might therefore be involved in a war, in accordance with our 
duty as allies. We could not however . . . advise our ally to adopt a 
conciliatory attitude incompatible with her dignity." 

Guch a statement is enough for the densest jury! 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 503 

a great war council. The heir of William I and of Frederick 
the Great was there, his captains, his admirals, his master 
financiers: all the controlling spirits who had perfected the 
huge Hohenzollern war machine in expectation of precisely 
this moment. Doubtless views were exchanged with the ut- 
termost frankness and all possibilities discussed in perfect 
cold blood and the precise moves by which millions of lives 
might be snuffed out in the war-game arranged and every- 
thing made ready for the last grim decision. Of course the 
details were kept carefully hidden, but there is no reason for 
doubting the substantial accuracy of what the well-informed 
Berlin correspondent of the London "Times" telegraphed 
the next day: "No secret, I understand, is made at the 
foreign office this morning of the fact that the military au- 
thorities were pressing for immediate mobilization, and that 
a decision must be reached within a day or two. . . . Im- 
minence of mobilization is so obvious that there is little 
secret about the preliminary preparations that are being 
made." 1 

When the conclave broke up Bethmann-Hollweg returned 
with precipitancy, presumably by fast motor-car, to Berlin 
and telephoned the British embassy. He wished to see Sir 
Edward Goschen. The ambassador at once called on the 
chancellor. Their interview was memorable. Hitherto 
nearly all their talk had been about Russia and Austria. Now 
suddenly Bethmann-Hollweg spoke openly of Germany en- 
tering a general war "owing to her obligations as Austria's 
ally." But the chancellor "made a strong bid for British 
neutrality." Let England only stand clear and Germany 
would promise not to crush France too severely, and espe- 
cially would not annex any of her home territories, although 
he was very vague as to what might happen to her colonies. 
* ' And Belgium ? ' ' asked the Englishman. ' ' It depended upon 
the action of France," came the answer, "what operations 
Germany might be forced to enter upon in Belgium, but 

i There was as yet no censorship on telegrams from Germany, and 
that country was as yet, officially, on good terms with England. The 
correspondent had every chance to get the gist of events. 



504 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

when the war was over her integrity would be respected if 
she had not sided against Germany." 

There was more pleasant talk about a permanent "under- 
standing with England," on which Bethmann-Hollweg had 
set his peaceful heart. The ambassador, however, received his 
words very coldly, said he did not think his government cared 
to make any pledges based on such propositions, and made 
haste to put his momentous tidings on the wires to London. 
That night Sir Edward Grey and his associates at least knew 
that Germany was plotting war against France and Russia, 
and that she wished to see England sit calmly by while 
Germany stripped France of her colonies, and otherwise so 
crippled her (e. g., by a bleeding indemnity) that even if her 
home territories were left intact, France would be eliminated 
from the list of great nations. 

This was the offer subsequently described by Mr. Asquith 
in the House of Commons as Germany's "infamous proposal." 
Its answer, however, had to wait till the morning following. 
Perhaps the Chancellor would have been less blunt and tact- 
less in his suggestion had he known almost that very minute 
Sir Edward Grey had been saying to the German ambassador 
at London that England was not pledged to fight beside 
France and Russia, but that if war did come British inter- 
ests and honor might draw her in, and in that case England 
must not "be open to any reproach . . . that his [German] 
government had been misled [by the friendly tone of the 
conversation] into supposing that we would not take action, 
and that if they had not been so misled the course of things 
might have been different." 

That night, when wearied diplomats turned in to snatch a 
little troubled sleep, they knew that the world was facing 
the greatest military crisis in human history, and that Ger- 
many was forcing the issue. Such was the morning and the 
evening of the sixth day. 

On July 30th, Sir Edward Grey answered, with the blunt- 
ness of an honest man deeply stirred, to the proposal sent 
the night before by Bethmann-Hollweg through the British 
ambassador. "His Majesty's government cannot for an in- 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 505 

stant entertain the Chancellor's proposal that they should 
bind themselves to neutrality on such terms." England is 
being asked "to make this bargain with Germany at the ex- 
pense of France." To do so would hurt British interests, 
but still more "it would be a disgrace to us from which the 
good name of this country [England] would never recover." 
Nor was it possible to bargain away "whatever obligation 
or interest we have as regards the neutrality of Belgium" — 
England therefore must "preserve her full freedom to act 
as circumstances require" in case things should come to a 
head as Bethmann-IIollweg contemplated. But Grey added 
an earnest and friendly promise — that, if the peace of Eu- 
rope could be preserved, he would do his uttermost to get 
some arrangement by which Germany "could be assured that 
no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her 
or her allies by France, Russia or ourselves, jointly or sepa- 
rately." Grey was not a man to make such a promise lightly. 
It would be unfair possibly to say that Bethmann-Hollweg 
brushed this suggestion thoughtlessly aside. The probabil- 
ity was rather that the Prussian war-party was then in such 
complete control of the German situation that nothing Eng- 
land could have said, short of a promise to attack France — 
to prevent her from being true to her alliance to Russia, 
would have had any effect on the crisis. 

Neither at Berlin nor at London, however, were all the 
prime actors in the drama. For several days now St. Peters- 
burg had been terribly stirred. The brutality of the Aus- 
trian attack on Serbia had seemed a direct insult to Russian 
prestige, honor and self-respect. Nicholas II was assuredly 
no genius and some of his intimates were strongly pro-Ger- 
man in their sympathies, but he was not an absolute weakling 
and he bitterly resented being displayed now before his own 
people as the shivering puppet of the Hohenzollern and the 
Hapsburg. The Russian aristocracy was not full of schemes 
for world empire like their Prussian compeers but they were 
proud of their national honor, of the claims of Holy Russia 
to be the protector of the lesser Slavic people, and of the 
right of Russia to be treated with decent consideration in 



506 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

every question of the Balkans : and for once the grand dukes 
and the generals were sustained by their old foes, the "Con- 
stitutional Democrats" and all the other more intelligent 
champions of a more liberal regime. 

Around Nicholas were now scores of powerful men repeat- 
ing the dread words "mobilize" and "fight" — and behind 
them was the voice of all the intelligence of the nation. It 
was realized that the empire was not well prepared for a life 
and death struggle, but this was a case where national honor 
demanded even a disastrous defeat rather than an ignominious I 
peace which would show that the dearest Russian interests 
could be trampled upon with impunity. On the 29th the 
czar had written personally to Kaiser Wilhelm: "A dis- 
graceful war has been declared on a weak nation: the in- 
dignation, which I fully share, is immense in Russia." The 
czar therefore begged the kaiser "in the name of our old 
friendship" to do his uttermost to avert the danger. The 
kaiser had offered to mediate, but had denied that "Aus- 
tria's action was 'disgraceful war' ": and then at 1 a. m. on 
the morning of the 30th he had wired Nicholas that Russia's 
mobilization against Austria would have "danger and seri- 
ous consequences": adding ominously, "The whole weight of 
the decision rests upon your shoulders, — they must bear the 
responsibility for war or peace." 

The telegraphic service between these imperial gentlemen 
was rapid. Twenty minutes later Nicholas was wiring back 
that the military measures Russia was taking "were decided 
upon five days ago for defensive purposes against Austria's 
preparations. . . . We need your strong pressure on Aus- 
tria in order that an understanding may be brought about 
with us. ' ' Thus Nicholas, in the simplicity of his heart, made 
answer, imagining that "Willy" (as he addressed his august 
friend) was in good faith working for peace. But to sit 
with folded hands and without stirring a soldier while Aus- 
tria assembled her myriads to trample over Serbia, was a 
thing not to be asked of the heir of Peter the Great : that is, 
not if a czar of all the Russias was to keep his throne. There 
is no autocracy strong enough to defy public opinion beyond 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 507 

a certain point, and every barrack room, every military club 
in the huge Muscovite empire was seething with impatience 
and martial fury. If Nicholas had done nothing but write 
protests in this crisis he would soon have written also his 
abdication, in 1914 instead of in 1917. But after all he was 
a man and a Russian. By July 30th he was being goaded 
into action — a fact which the Potsdam war-lords had of 
course complacently discounted. 

While the kaiser and the czar were exchanging telegrams, 
the kaiser's ambassador at St. Petersburg was making a 
frantic visit at 2 a. m. on the 30th to the Russian foreign 
office. This ambassador (Count Pourtales) was personally 
an honorable man who, now that the ground was opening at 
his feet, began to realize how horrible was the danger. M. 
Sazonof met him to point out that "war was inevitable. " 
How could it be otherwise when the Teutonic powers were 
unyielding, and authentic information was coming in that 
Germany was making elaborate military and naval prepara- 
tions against Russia, doing everything in short except to 
decree formal mobilization : ' ' There would be a revolution in 
Russia if she were to tolerate such a state of affairs." At 
this interview the unhappy Pourtales, overwhelmed by the 
crisis, "completely broke down on seeing that war was in- 
evitable. ' ' He made a fervent appeal to Sazonof to give him 
something to telegraph to Berlin as "a last hope." The Rus- 
sian (doubtless also greatly moved) drew up this formula 
which went the very limit of possible concession and should 
have ended all controversy unless the' Teutonic powers were 
bent on war at any price : "If Austria, recognizing that her 
conflict with Serbia has assumed the character of a question 
of European interest, declares herself ready to eliminate from 
her ultimatum points which violate the principle of the sov- 
ereignty of Serbia, Russia engages to stop all military pre- 
parations." More than that no Russian could say, unless he 
were prepared to urge his country to sit down as helpless as 
China before the greatest insult that had ever threatened a 
great European power. 

Nevertheless, the day wore on without any developments 



508 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

much more threatening. The truth seems to have been that 
at last at Vienna leaders were coming to realize the terrible 
nature of the tempest they had almost unchained, and that 
possibly they were being made the dupes and tools of their 
"loyal allies" at Berlin. Even Caesar hesitated at the Rubi- 
con, and Count Berchtold and his noble associates were very 
rniny Caesars. They told the ambassadors that since Russia 
w T as mobilizing they must of course hasten their own prepara- 
tions, but ''this should not be regarded as a threat." Their 
own ambassador at St. Petersburg could hold "conversa- 
tions" wijt.h Sazonof, although they did not specify just what 
concessions were possible. The situation was still complex 
and clouded, but the Russian ambassador at Vienna grew more 
hopeful "that something may yet be done to prevent war 
with Austria." He does not seem to have realized that it 
mattered little whether Vienna stood on the brink of the 
stream and hesitated, or dashed across, provided Potsdam had 
no chilly scruples. Such was the morning and evening of 
the seventh day. 

On July^Sl the morning seemed brighter at Vienna, 
I London and St. Petersburg. Grey sent his last hopeful sug- / 
' gestion : "If Germany will get any reasonable proposition 
put forward, which made it clear that Germany and Austria 
were striving to preserve European peace and that Russia 
and France would be unreasonable if they rejected it, I will 
support it at St. Petersburg and Paris, and go to the length 
of saying that if Russia and France will not accept it, I will 
have nothing to do with the consequences. Otherwise, if 
France is drawn in, we shall be drawn in. " If the words that 
had been coming from Berlin about "peace" were not those 
of brazen hypocrisy, here surely was something for German 
diplomats to work upon: and if they felt that "their duty 
to their ally" made them hesitant, their ticklish honor might 
have been appeased by the knowledge that Austria was actu- 
ally agreeing to talk terms of accommodation with Russia. 
Austria showed a willingness to agree to halt her march into 
Serbian territory, while Russia "undertook to preserve her 
waiting attitude, ' ' and the six great powers were to ' ' examine 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 509 

how Serbia can give satisfaction to Austria without impair- 
ing her sovereign rights- or independence." 

This compliant attitude of Austria was undoubtedly the 
very last thing welcomed at Potsdam. It deprived the war 
party of its best pretext for striking home — namely, its claim 
that as a loyal ally Germany must stand by Austria, come 
what might. There had been much excitement in Germany 
during these days of tension: patriotic demonstrations, pre- 
liminary warnings to the reservists to get ready, everything 
in short, save actual mobilization; but although the junker 
newspapers had been fiery from the outset, the attitude of the 
more moderate press had been at first very hesitant to accept 
the Austrian ultimatum as a thing for unqualified German 
endorsement. The Social Democrats (who had cast over 
4,000,000 votes at the last election) failed to see any reason 
why their own country should intervene. The " Vorwaerts, ' ' 
their great Berlin organ, had said bluntly on July 25th, that 
the demands on Serbia "are more brutal than have been ever 
put to an independent state in the world's history, and can 
only be intended deliberately to provoke war." On the 29th 
it had declared that "the camarilla of war-lords is working 
with absolutely unscrupulous means ... to start a world- 
wide fire to devastate Europe." On that day also there had 
been several great mass meetings in Berlin to denounce the 
war, and one of these was said to have been attended by 
70,000 men. If therefore war in behalf of Austria was 
unpopular with a great mass of the folk of Germany, what 
chance of a fortunate "Day" if Austria should ungratefully 
slink back at the end and refuse to force the situation ? Some- 
thing must be done, and done quickly. There was no Ems 
telegram ready with Bismarck as the genial "editor," but 
press and electricity could nevertheless be put to other pur- 
poses. Was it the crown prince himself who knew how to 
force the issue, or Von Moltke the Chief of Staff, or Von 
Tirpitz the admiral, or some other less prominent Highness 
or Excellency? The personal memoirs will one day tell. 
There is little doubt that some noble gentleman felt the im- 
pulse of genius and acted upon it. He presumably lived 



510 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

to be amply satisfied by the magnitude of his achievement. 

Hitherto Russia had only mobilized partially. She had 
called out a certain number of corps of her huge reserves to 
concentrate against Austria. But Austria and Russia had 
repeatedly mobilized on a pretty large scale during earlier 
Balkan crises, and then had looked on placidly while the 
diplomats disentangled the snarls. Austria seemed quite 
willing to let Russia mobilize partially again, and to confine 
her own military energies entirely to Serbia. But so far 
Russia had not mobilized the remainder of her army in a way 
spelling any menace to Germany. If she did so, the Prus- 
sian war-lords could demand the mobilization of their own 
host and after that — the rest would be inevitable. 

Everybody in Berlin was expecting a mobilization order. 
Young men were making their farewells to sweethearts and 
families; factory managers were preparing to operate with 
reduced help; bankers were taking precautions against 
"runs" and panics. Still, on the 30th, no order had come: 
although beyond a doubt the military chiefs were clamoring 
for it. Why this delay? Because, according to all reason- 
able inference, the chancellor was feeling great uncertainty 
as to what he had earlier reckoned upon — the neutrality of 
England. The German ambassador at London and all his 
astute assistants had probably sent messages earlier as to the 
growth of pacifism in Britain, of the absorption of the great 
labor elements in schemes for social betterment, of the influ- 
ence in the cabinet of John Burns and Lord Morley, devoted 
peace-at-any-price men, and of the alacrity with which divers 
Englishmen had swallowed doctrines like those of the com- 
fortable "Norman Angell." Better still had been the news 
that Britain was about to be entangled in a civil war in Ire- 
land over the miserable contentions between the Catholic Home 
Rulers and Protestant Ulstermen. It had seemed incredi- 
ble that selfish and pacifist Britain could ever draw the sword 
over a "Balkan question." But there were increasing signs 
that Britain did not consider this crisis strictly a "Balkan 
question," that if the Pan-German plot had not been un- 
masked it had been seen through a pretty thin veil, and that 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 511 

England was not prepared to watch Russia's ally France 
trampled over and stricken from the list of great powers. 
And if England entered the war Bethmann-Hollweg, and it 
may well be also his astute if not squeamish master, probably 
had clear suspicions that the "Day" might not close upon 
a prompt and easy victory. Therefore mobilization had been 
delayed. Irrevocable words had not been spoken. All of 
which was highly irritating to the "high-born" Excellencies 
of the Great General Staff. England or no England, they 
would go ahead. 

About mid-day on the 30th of July Berlin newsvenders 
began hawking in the central part of the city a special edi- 
tion of the "Lokal-Anzeiger" announcing that general 
mobilization for Germany had been ordered. This paper 
was reputed to be in close touch with the German govern- 
ment bureaus. It was also alleged to have been financed by 
junker capital. Its reputation as a quasi-government organ 
was high. There had been a "leak," or had there been an in- 
spiration? The police at length were hard after the news- 
venders, confiscating their copies, and an official contradic- 
tion was also ordered. But there had been an appreciable 
length of time between the hawking of the paper and the 
contradiction. The moment the paper had appeared, the 
Russian ambassador and also the St. Petersburg press agents 
had wired the tidings home. The Prussian war-lords (if they 
knew in advance of this newspaper "enterprise") knew well 
what the effect these tidings would have in Muscovy. 

Already Nicholas II was being beset with frantic appeals 
from his men of action to order complete mobilization, because, 
as was being justly said, the (1) Russian mobilization was in 
any case very much slower than the German, and might be 
too late at best: (2) Germany had already gone so far with 
her "advance preparations" that final mobilization was in 
part a formality. And now came the news that Germany had 
ordered complete mobilization, which meant (as everybody 
knew) that she would soon be ready to strike with terrible 
effectiveness. Nicholas II would have been more than human 
had he refused to give way: especially as a very awkward 



512 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

interval occurred before the tidings of German mobilization 
were contradicted. When the contradiction did come, the 
Russian men of action could wisely say that the tale would 
never have been printed had not mobilization been imminent, 
aud what with German secret methods that it was prob- 
ably taking place sub rosa. To hesitate longer was to im- 
peril the life of Russia. 

Nicholas was won over. Early on the morning of the 31st 
the Russian wires were carrying the summons of the "little 
father" to all his battle-worthy subjects. The "Lokal 
Anzeiger" edition had supplied precisely the needful impetus 
to produce Russian mobilization. If it was an "accident," 
it was one of those accidents which makes one believe that 
the devil directs the laws of chance. 1 

Aud now the Prussian war-lords could work their will. 
The instant the news came back that Russia was mobilizing, 
they could cry in turn "the fatherland is in danger," and 
that, whatever England did, radical measures must be taken 
to fend oft' invasion. At noon on the 31st, "Imminence of 
"War" was proclaimed throughout Germany, with consequent 
martial law and the complete squelching of socialistic demon- 
strations and protests. On top of this home proclamation 
went the ultimatum to Russia — couched in terms no proud 
empire could possibly accept, and reducing all the protesting 
talk about peace to monkey's chatter. 

Alleging that Russian mobilization put Germany in peril, 
Bethmann-Hollweg telegraphed his ambassador in St. Peters- 
burg to serve notice on Sazonof that Germany would mobilize 
"unless Russia stops every measure of war against us and 
Austria 2 within twelve hours and notifies us definitely to 
this effect." Simultaneously another message went over the 

i The Russian judgments as to this "accident" are dark and specific. 
They allege that not merely was the edition carefully concocted by 
those in high authority, but that by a suddenly imposed "censorship," 
dispatches contradicting the alleged news were held up for hours ere 
they could go on to St. Petersburg. 

2 Why "Austria," unless Germany was bound on forcing the war at 
any price, inasmuch as Austria had already indicated she did not con- 
sider Russian mobilization unfriendly? 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 513 

wires to Paris. France had remained helpless and hoping 
against hope through all this terrible week. The quarrel 
was not the least of her making. Her diplomats had ex- 
hausted themselves seeking an honorable issue for Austria 
and Russia alike: but she was bound by the firmest kind of 
treaty to help Russia if Russia should be attacked. Were 
she to break this pledge her pleasant villages would lie un- 
scathed for the moment, but at the cost of the last shreds of 
French honor. Betraying her own ally, she could, expect no 
succor from any nation, and she would remain isolated and 
helpless — as well as sullied — before Teutonia. To President 
Poincare's cabinet the chancellor now sent word that twelve 
hours' grace had been given Russia to demobilize: and did 
the French government ' ' intend to remain neutral in a Russo- 
German war ? Reply must be made within eighteen hours. ' ' 1 

In Berlin that day there were tumultuous demonstrations, — 
cheers and huzzas from the brave young officers who saw 
visions of battle, glory, quick promotion, amid the trans- 
forming into splendid reality of all the strategic and tactical 
theories they had evolved in study or peaceful manoeuvre. 
The Day, the day for which they and every other loyal 
Pan-German had wearily waited, was about to dawn. There 
were great crowds in Unter den Linden, and deep cries, "To 
Paris ! " "To St. Petersburg ! ' ' The multitude swarmed down 
the famous avenue to the huge grey palace of the Hohenzol- 
lerns, acclaiming the master of a greater army than ever 
Xerxes had led to battle. From the balcony of the palace 
William II sent his powerful voice over the sea of heads of 
his upward-gazing subjects: 

"A fateful hour has fallen for Germany/' proclaimed the 
Emperor. "Envious peoples everywhere are compelling us 
to our just defence. The sword is being forced into our hand. 
I hope that if my efforts at the last hour do not succeed in 
bringing our opponents to see eye to eye with us and in main- 

i Keliable evidence, published in 1918, indicated that if France had 
pledged neutrality, Germany would next have demanded occupation for 
the war of Verdun and Toul as pledges of good-faith. The Potsdam 
leaders were anxious to pick a quarrel with France at any cost. 



514 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

taming peace we shall with God's help so wield the sword 
that we shall restore it to its sheath again with honor. War 
would demand enormous sacrifices of blood and property 
from the German people, but we should show our enemies what 
it means to provoke Germany. And now I commend you to 
God. Go to church. Kneel down before God and pray for 
His help for our gallant army." 

Did the Emperor realize the verdict the world would pass 
on his cry, ''The sword is being forced into our hand" ? Had 
he prepared this dramatic call to battle some days in advance, 
or did he speak with true spontaneity? One thing is cer- 
tain, that on this July 31, the last faint, chance of peace 
was gone. The military men at Potsdam and Berlin knew 
well enough what they were doing when they sent threats 
with a time limit to St. Petersburg and Paris. Neither Russia 
nor France could have cringed to them then and have con- 
tinued to hold up its head as a self-respecting nation. So 
their Excellencies, Serenities and Highnesses waited while the 
fateful hours went by: and thus passed the morning and the 
evening of the eighth day. 

The German ultimatum had not been presented in St. 
Petersburg until close to midnight on the 31st. The 1st of 
August saw from the outset the signs of the inevitable climax. 
It is true, Germany had only threatened Russia with counter- 
mobilization if the czar would not demobilize: and in theory, 
negotiations could still continue merrily with each party 
armed but not fighting. Austria seemed quite willing to let 
this be the case: but not Germany. If there was one arch- 
maxim, however, in the Prussian military program it was 
that German mobilization, being extremely rapid, must be 
followed by an instantaneous and deadly blow before the 
slower mobilization of probable enemies could be completed 
and the initial weaknesses in their war machine repaired. To 
sit passively across the frontier while Nicholas II brought up 
troops from Manchuria was to the Great General Staff an 
act not of folly but of suicide. As early as July 26, Count 
Pourtales had stated the certainty of this deduction plainly 
to Sazonof. If mobilization once took place, he had said, "the 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 515 

military considerations of the General Staff will be supreme, 
and the situation will become irrevocable once 'the button 
has been pressed' by the Chief of Staff in Germany. " Ev- 
erybody knew then that for the land of the Hohenzollerns 
mobilization meant the same as war. 1 

On this fateful August 1st, there went out the imperial or- 
der for general mobilization and all the German Empire 
rang with the clang of arms. From Paris a similar summons 
went out to the French Republic, although up to the last 
Premier Viviani was assuring the German ambassador that 
" mobilization did not necessarily entail war," and that there 
was no need for a rupture of diplomatic relations. The posi- 
tion of France needed no pronunciamentos. ' ' I have no inten- 
tion of making any statement [to the German ambassador] on 
the subject of his demands," declared Premier Viviani dryly, 
"and I shall confine myself to telling him that France will 
have regard to her own interests." 

The final move on the chess board was clearly Germany's 
and her rulers had no hesitancy about making it. At 7:10 
A. m. on August 1st, Count Pourtales again went his familiar 
way to the office of Sazonof. He had a communication which, 
by the errors and duplication of words in the copy presented, 
had obviously been prepared in great haste and apparently 
with the intention of declaring war on Russia whether she 
gave no answer to the ultimatum at all, or any kind of 
answer except one of servile compliance. After reciting the 
good intentions of Kaiser Wilhelm as peacemaker with 
Austria, and the ruin of all these efforts by the Russian mo- 

i Americans will recall the fact that Germany had refused a little 
earlier to sign with us one of the so-called Bryan "cooling off" treaties, 
providing for a year of negotiations ere declaring war, in-as-much as 
she could not sign similar treaties with France, England or Russia be- 
cause then "Germany would be deprived of her greatest asset in war — 
namely her readiness for a sudden and overpowering attack." (Mr. 
Gerard's "My Four Years in Germany," p. 61.) 

The statement about the German Staff policy, quoted in the text, 
does not appear in any German report of Count Pourtales' doings, but 
is less discreetly published in a dispatch of the Austrian ambassador at 
St. Petersburg to his government. (Austrian "Red Book, No. 28.") 



516 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

bilization, the ambassador closed the document with these fate- 
ful words : il His Majesty, the Emperor, my august sovereign, 
in the name of the German empire, accepts the challenge and 
considers himself at war with Russia." 

So the dream of the crown prince, of Bernhardi, of all the 
exultant Pan-Germans up and down the Fatherland, was 
about to be realized. The war-machine that had stood silent 
but not rusting for forty-three years was to resume its ap- 
pointed and glorious task. Yet the world still waited. The 
picture of embattled Europe was not yet complete. In Ger- 
many, in Austria, in Russia and still more in agonizing 
France, on whom all knew the first bolt was to fall, there was 
one all-important question : 

"What would England do?" 

THE PRECIPITATION OF THE WAR BY GERMANY 

Mr. Morgenthau recorded in his diary that the conversation with 
the German ambassador took place August 2Gth, 1914. See New York 
"World," October 14, 1917. His statement was received as having official 
accuracy by the United States Government Committee of Public Infor- 
mation which reprinted his statement in its official pamphlet, "Con- 
quest and Kultur" (December, 1917), pp. 144-5. 

There is a good deal more cumulative evidence as to the nature of this 
conference early in July. On July 28, 1917, the London "Times" pub- 
lished a circumstantial account of the reports current in well-informed 
circles in Germany about the matter The council was held, according 
to this story, on July 5th, at Potsdam, and high Austrian dignitaries 
were present. The meeting "decided upon the principal points in the 
Austrian ultimatum which was to be dispatched to Serbia eighteen 
days later. It was recognized that Russia would probably refuse to 
submit and that war would result." The Kaiser then departed for 
Norway to throw dust in the eyes of the French and Russian govern- 
ments. 

The German foreign office was quite confident that England would 
not fight, and this was part of the working hypothesis of the high-born 
conspirators. "Three weeks later, when it became known that England 
would not remain neutral, Bethmann-Hollweg wished to withdraw, but 
it was too late. The decision of July 5th was crucial and irrevocable." 
The denials which came from Berlin of this story were perfunctory and 
pro forma. 

After the outbreak of the war it was easy to recall circumstances 
which seemed to indicate that the German army was getting ready for 
action some weeks before the dispatch of the Serbian note. As a minor 



SOWING THE WIND— THE SERBIAN NOTE 517 

example, the writer can state that he was in Trier (Treves) on the 
Mosel around July 10th, 1914. At that time the quaint old frontier 
city was very full of troops, there was a large encampment in the sub- 
urbs, the hotels were over-run with officers, and in the little villages 
round about there was the constant sound of rifle firing, — evidently of 
target practice on the ranges. 

There is abundant evidence that in the two weeks preceding the 
"twelve days" the stock markets of the world witnessed a selling move- 
ment which was afterward amply explained as being engineered by the 
German banking interests seeking cover. The gold reserve of the em- 
pire had already been practically doubled over that of 1913. 

In passing, it may be observed that throughout all these adventures, 
down to the final catastrophe, the Austrian leaders and politicians 
showed themselves servile puppets of their infinitely more masterful and 
intelligent "allies." For a mess of pottage of increased local influence 
in the Balkans they were willing to commit their empire to a bloody 
scheme that promised, in any case, to deliver it over hand and foot to 
an enormously powerful Germany. 

The more the plot of July, 1914, is examined the more fixed becomes 
the conviction that the Pan-Germans had adopted a somewhat deliberate 
project for achieving world-dominion by means of three separate but not 
remotely connected stages: 

1. The defeat and reduction to impotence of Russia and still more of 
France, with the establishment of Teutonic influence across the Balkans 
and Turkey to the Persian Gulf. 

2. The defeat of Great Britain, the seizure of all or most of the 
British colonies, and the substitution of German sea-power for English. 

3. The violation of the Monroe Doctrine to permit German dominance 
in Latin America and the seizure of the Panama canal, and the pene- 
tration and breaking-down of the independence of the United States by 
an admixture of outward force and internal German-American "influ- 
ence." 

If however England had been willing to stand clear, the attack on 
America might well have come second, or even first on the list. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND THE SCRAP OF PAPER 

ENGLAND was in a position of terrible difficulty. If the 
crisis had come a week later Ulster and the rest of Ireland 
would probably have been at each other's throats in civil war. 
Several members of the cabinet up to the last minute refused 
to see the ground opening at the nation's feet, and threatened 
to disrupt the Liberal party in event of Grey and others press- 
ing for action. Mr. Asquith, the premier, seems to have real- 
ized that what Germany was forcing was not merely a " Bal- 
kan question'' but an issue of world power in which England 
was enormously interested, but he was very loath to antici- 
pate public opinion, very loath to see all the fine Liberal pro- 
gram of domestic reform shipped overboard in the face of a 
foreign tempest, and very loath (so his critics insisted) to 
let matters come to a point where the Liberals might be 
pushed from power and their Conservative rivals seize the 
helm of state. Englishmen generally were decidedly unwil- 
ling to pour out blood and treasure merely to save the inde- 
pendence of Serbia, and although they did not love the Ger- 
man kaiser they had very little enthusiasm for defending the 
despotism of Nicholas II, many phases whereof they not 
unjustly hated. 

Nevertheless the case was very different about France. 
Very many Englishment realized that to have France trampled 
over again by German armies, to have Paris taken, to have 
France bled white by a tremendous indemnity (even if there 
were no more annexations) meant striking France from the 
list of great powers, and meant an inordinate growth of the 
new Teutonic colossus. The ruin of France was the imme- 
diate preliminary to a direct stroke at England; and the 
majority of intelligent Englishmen knew it. 

.But not all Englishmen were intelligent. The laboring 

518 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 519 

and the rural classes and the small tradespeople were probably 
the least military and the least imaginative folk in Europe. 
That any summons from across the Channel to march forth 
to battle could take them away from their firesides and their 
toast and tea seemed one of the most improbable things in the 
world. And among Englishmen who should have known 
better divers had been temporarily infected with the pale 
pacifism of the Angel Lane type and its gospel of crass ma- 
terialism — a gospel that agreed well with the hopes of regular 
dividends and undisturbed vacations. Never was there a 
people less prepared for a horrid crisis than the good people 
of England. 1 They had even been better prepared two years 
before at the time of the Agadir tension, for since then count- 
less voices and pens had assured them that "relations with 
Germany were steadily improving," and various home issues, 
especially that of Ireland, had assumed an almost overpower- 
ing gravity. 

Since July 23rd Sir Edward Grey had been placed in a 
dilemma indescribably difficult. He had been besought by 
France and Russia to tell Germany that if war did come, then 
England would surely fight against her. He knew that if he 
made this threat the chances of keeping peace were probably 
greatly increased — Germany did not want too many foes at 
once. But he also knew that then, if Germany despite every- 
thing drew the sword, England was involved in a war as to 
the wisdom of which her cabinet was divided, and her people 
wholly uninstructed, and which very likely they would 
refuse to conduct with the sacrifice and energy without which 

i The writer passed from the continent to England the day of Rus- 
sian mobilization, and he stopped in the small cathedral city of Canter- 
bury. The town was decorated with bunting in honor of an approach- 
ing athletic carnival. Anything like a great war and its confusion and 
danger seemed utterly unthinkable in that slumberous town under the 
shadow of its august minster. There was not the least excitement, and 
only a rather languid sale for the London "extras" sent up that evening, 
although their headlines were lurid. 

The attitude of the good citizens seemed admirably summarized by 
the remark of the worthy keeper of the hotel : "I hope to goodness, sir, 
this accursed war-talk will soon come to nothing: otherwise cricket week 
will be a dead failur.el" 



520 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

no great war can be waged. The most lie could do was to 
warn Germany that England reserved "complete liberty of 
action"; to assure France and Russia that she would take an 
extremely friendly attitude in case worst came to worst; and 
finally on August 2nd, when it was clear that peace between 
Russia and Germany was broken, to inform France — after a 
British cabinet meeting — that subject to approval of parlia- 
ment, "I am authorized to give assurance that if the German 
fleet comes into the channel or through the North Sea to 
undertake hostile operations against French coasts or ship- 
ping, the British fleet will give all the protection in its power." 
That was all for the moment, although great interests and 
parties in London called for more radical action, and action 
was in the air. Then while England shook herself from her 
dream of peace, while the rumblings of the mobilizations 
drifted across the channel, came one word "Belgium" — and 
the pacifists slunk to their caves. 1 

Belgium was one of the most happy and prosperous coun- 
tries in the world. Its people had been counted fortunate 
among their neighbors. Its dense and thrifty population 
lived mostly by peaceful industry. Its elegant capital, Brus- 
sels, was accounted a "little Paris." Antwerp vied with 
Hamburg as one of the chief ports of the continent. The 
quaint cities of Flanders were a delight to visitors alike for 
their reminiscences of the past and their thriving present. 
Confident in her peace, unafflicted by vast imperial ambitions, 
without a single serious outstanding diplomatic problem with 
the great Powers, Belgium seemed to face nothing but a placid 
and fortunate future. She was without the slightest Balkan 
interests ; and was the member of no alliances. Theoretically 
the clash over Serbia should have left her as unaffected as a 
contest between Argentina and Chile — it was something very 
far away. 

Belgium also was not merely neutral, but she was especially 
neutralized in Europe. In the olden days the "Low Coun- 
tries" had been the cock-pit of the nations, and England in 

i See note at end of chapter: Attitude of England, August 1, 1914. 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 521 

particular had fought bitter wars to prevent them from fall- 
ing into the hands of some great unfriendly power — the 
aggressor usually having been France. It was long recog- 
nized that the naval power which held Antwerp held one of the 
doors for invading England. Hence the English had, in self- 
protection, insisted that France should not control Belgium, 
and the French in turn had disliked to see this country con- 
trolled by one of their national enemies. In 1815 the Con- 
gress of Vienna had annexed Belgium to the kingdom of Hol- 
land, but this arrangement had not worked well. In 1830 the 
Belgians revolted against the Dutch. In 1831 the great Pow- 
ers recognized the independence of Belgium, and at the same 
time determined that Belgium should form "a perpetually 
neutral State" and that they should guarantee to her " per- 
petual neutrality and also the integrity and inviolability of 
her territory." This pledge was signed by England, Austria, 
Russia, France and Prussia, Italy not having yet come into 
national existence. 

In 1839 this treaty was reaffirmed by the Powers in a still 
clearer treaty: "Belgium . . . shall form an independent and 
perpetually neutral state. It shall be bound to observe such 
neutrality towards all other states." It was well understood 
that one of the prime points in this "neutrality" was that no 
foreign armies were to be allowed to cross Belgium for any 
warlike purpose. To enable Belgium to discharge this duty 
she was allowed to maintain an army and to fortify certain 
strategic points, notably Antwerp, Namur and Liege. Seem- 
ingly the position of Belgium, however, was very secure. The 
five greatest nations in Europe had pledged themselves to 
protect her provided she discharged her own obligations, for, 
as King Leopold I wrote to Queen Victoria in 1856, "Bel- 
gium's very existence is based upon [her] neutrality, which 
the other powers have guaranteed and are bound to maintain 
if Belgium keeps her engagements." 

The resistance of any violation of her territories was thus 
a part of the duty of Belgium, and ought not to have involved 
her in any general war. In 1907 the Hague Conference de- 



522 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

cided that "the resistance, even by force, of a neutral Power 
to attempts against its neutrality cannot be considered as acts 
of hostility." 

During the earlier part of Belgium's existence as a kingdom 
the general fear had been of an attack by France. In 1866 
Bismarck had even tempted Napoleon III to dally with a 
treacherous attempt to annex Belgium to France ; an attempt 
which Bismarck duly exploited in 1870 in order to win hatred 
for his enemy. England became anxious in that year lest 
France try to seize Belgium in event of her victory over Prus- 
sia, and caused both France and Prussia to sign special com- 
pacts for the occasion reaffirming "their settled determina- 
tion to maintain the independence and neutrality of Belgium 
as established by the . . . treaty of 1839." In Prussia's case 
this precaution was hardly necessary, for two weeks before this 
pact was signed Bismarck gave firm assurances at Brussels 
that Prussia "and its allies will respect the neutrality of Bel- 
gium, provided that it is respected by the other belligerent 
party." So the case had rested, being strengthened of course 
by the Hague proviso of 1907 that belligerents should not send 
troops or supply trains across any neutral country. 

Belgium thus seemed doubly protected: I. By the clear 
sanctions which that once reverenced thing called interna- 
tional law afforded to all self-respecting neutral countries in 
general ; II. By the special compact of 1839 which gave Bel- 
gium a peculiar and privileged place among the nations. 

After 1870 it was clear enough that France would not for a 
long day be in a position to over-run Belgium. If there was 
any aggression it would be from Germany. That a German 
invasion was possible military men long knew. Years before 
the crisis the case had been stated pithily in 1882 in a quasi- 
official German newspaper, 1 ' ' Germany has no political motive 
to violate the neutrality of Belgium, but the military advan- 
tages which might result may force her to do so. ' ' The reason 
for this military opinion is clearly explained in the "Deutsche 
Krieger Zeitung" 2 just one month after the great war actu- 

i "Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung"; March 4th, 1882. 

2 Official organ of the German Military Union; Sept. 2nd, 1914. 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 523 

ally began; "The plan for the invasion of France had been 
clearly settled for a long time. It had to be pursued with 
success in the north through Belgium: thus avoiding the 
strong line of delaying forts which the enemy [France] had 
made to defend its frontiers towards Germany, and which 
would have been extremely difficult to break through. ' ' * Mil- 
itary books had discussed this desirability of "the Belgian 
route to Paris" with the uttermost frankness. Everybody 
knew that in case of war the Germans would throw away a 
great martial advantage if they respected the treaties and 
tried to advance on the direct road from Lorraine via Verdun 
or Nancy. What, of course, the Pan-Germans thought about 
respecting these treaties was no enigma. 

Nevertheless the government of William II did not de- 
nounce the treaties, despite dark suspicions. On the contrary 
it used every effort, apparently, to stifle unfriendly surmises 
in Belgium and England without actually making a cast-iron 
statement that the neutrality pledge was in all cases to be 
respected. In 1904 the constant building of "strategic rail- 
ways" near the Belgian frontier began to make Brussels 
anxious, but nothing actually came to pass until 1911, when 
the Belgians inquired of Bethmann-Hollweg whether some- 
thing could not be done to dispel their growing anxiety. 
Upon this, the latter "declared that Germany had no inten- 
tion of violating Belgian neutrality, ? ' but he could not make a 
public declaration to that effect because then France would 
know she had nothing to guard against on that part of her 
frontier. However, in April, 1914, during a Reichstag debate 
a Socialist deputy asked Yon Jagow, the foreign minister, 
about the fears in Belgium lest her neutrality be not re- 
spected. Von Jagow replied, ' ' Belgian neutrality is provided 
for by international conventions, and Germany is determined 

1 After the loss of Alsace-Lorraine the French had manfully con- 
structed an artificial line of barrier forts to replace the lost line of the 
Rhine. The chief of these great fortresses were Verdun, Toul, Epinal 
and Belfort. The Germans were quite justified in not desiring to break 
their teeth upon them. The military road to Paris via Belgium was 
much smoother, with better roads, fewer hills and fewer formidable 
fortresses. 



524 THE ROOTS OF THE "WAR 

to respect those conventions. ' ' Yon Heering, the minister of 
war, added, ' ' Germany will not lose sight of the fact that the 
neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by international treaty." 
Such statements might lull the thoughtless and delight the 
pacifist, but they were not likely to satisfy responsible states- 
men. In 1906 and again in 1912 there seem to have been con- 
versations between British and Belgian officers as to the kind 
of military aid England might send Belgium in event of a 
wanton attack from Germany. Nothing definite was ar- 
ranged; no unfriendly unneutral move was planned against 
Germany — the first move must be hers. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, the Belgians were decidedly too confident in their forts 
at Liege and Namur to hold up the invader, for they never 
dreamed of the new mobile howitzers ; they also were too slow 
in reorganizing their army. Nominally they had enforced 
universal military service ; actually the number of youths 
exempted was large and the training of part of the remainder 
imperfect. Laws were duly passed to stiffen the army but 
they were not to be in full effect until 1918. There was a 
complete lack of heavy artillery. The guns had been ordered 
(from Krupps!) and when the crisis came most had been 
unaccountably "delayed." Most of the remainder of the 
new Belgian military material was "awaited" from other 
German munition plants. From a population of 7,000,000 
Belgium ought to have mobilized 700,000 men to defend 
hearth and home. Actually in the first crisis a field army of 
only 110,000 seems to have been mobilized. Of course this 
condition was well known to the German General Staff, which 
probably had more spies in Belgium than in any other one 
country, and this entered into the plan of campaign which the 
staff relentlessly followed. 1 

i The tale is that William II, when asked as to the time required to 
force his way across Belgium, answered by swinging his hand violently 
from right to left, exclaiming, "I shall go through her like that!" 
There is no doubt that the German authorities held the Belgian army 
in the uttermost contempt, and considered the little kingdom protected 
only by a sentimental barrier. 

Shortly before the outbreak of the war a German colonel is reported 
by Baron Beyens, Belgian minister to Berlin, as remonstrating thus 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 525 

When the crisis broke over Europe, the Belgians made 
haste to assure all the jangling powers of their perfect neutral- 
ity and began taking military precautions to protect their 
frontiers. Naturally they drew near diplomatically to Eng- 
land, which was obviously the one power, fairly disinterested, 
that could give them real protection, and England had already 
stirred in their behalf. Her honor was deeply committed to 
seeing that the Belgian compacts were observed, and besides 
her honor it is not unfair to add that her national safety would 
be obviously jeopardized if a great rival empire, under the 
guise of attacking France, were actually to seize upon Ant- 
werp and Ostend. As soon as the chances of a general war 
became serious, Grey began giving plain hints to Berlin that 
assurances as to Belgium were in order. The answers he 
obtained only strengthened rising suspicions. At last on the 
31st of July he sent identical questions to Paris and Berlin. 
Would France and Germany respectively "engage to respect 
the neutrality of Belgium, so long as no other power violates 
it?" 

The answer from Paris was a clear and satisfactory affirma- 
tive. Not so that from Berlin. Von Jagow told the British 
ambassador that "he must consult the emperor and the 
chancellor before he could possibly answer I [the envoy] 
gathered from what he said that he thought any reply they 
might give could not but disclose a certain amount of their 
plan of campaign in the event of war ensuing, and he was 
therefore very doubtful whether they would return any 
answer at all." 

Such a reply of course confirmed Grey's worst suspicions. 

with him upon reports of the increase in the Belgian army: "What is 
the good of enlarging the number of your troops? With the small num- 
ber that you had before, you would never dream of barring the way 
to us in a Franco-German war. The increase of your effectives might 
inspire you with the idea of resisting us. If a single shot were fired 
on us, Heaven knows what would become of Belgium!" Beyens an- 
swered, "We should be rated still lower than at present, if we were 
craven enough not to defend ourselves." He repeated this opinion sev- 
eral times to other Germans, but "they listened with smiles, they did 
not believe me." 



526 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

The next morning (August 1) he took up the matter directly 
with the German ambassador at London. If Germany could 
give some assurance about Belgium "it would materially con- 
tribute to relieve anxiety and tension here [in England]." 
Prince Lichnowsky blandly replied with the counter question : 
If Germany gave such a promise would England engage to 
remain neutral? Grey could only tell him the future must 
decide British policy, only it was true that respect for Belgium 
would appeal very strongly to the peace element in England. 
Nothing therefore came from this thrust and counter thrust. 
It was perfectly plain that England might be selling her 
neutrality for a mess of pottage, if she undertook to bargain 
with Germany as to the conditions under which that power 
would keep her plighted word and perform her most obvious 
international obligations : 1 and so through that fatal Sunday 
on which the kaiser had sent defiance to Russia the case 
drifted, and then shifted abruptly to yet another capital. 

During these days of clamor in Europe Belgium had mo- 
bilized her small army indeed and taken precautions. She 
had sent very solemn assurances of her neutrality to all the 
great powers. Her statesmen of course were extremely 
anxious, and yet the danger did not seem imminent. On the 
morning of the 31st of July the German minister at Brussels 
had assured the Belgian foreign office that "he was certain the 
sentiments expressed [in 1911 by Bethmann-Hollweg, to the 
effect that Belgium was not to be violated] had not been 
changed." From Berlin the reports were not as clear as 
could be desired, but as M. Davignon, the Belgian foreign min- 
ister, said, "a declaration from the German government might 
appear superfluous in view of existing treaties. ' ' 

On August 1st, it appeared that the Germans had seized the 
small, independent and neutralized Grand Duchy of Luxem- 
burg. This caused a shock at Brussels, yet the cases of Lux- 
emburg and Belgium were not quite parallel. 2 The good folk 

1 Of course all question as to England's attitude was mere quibbling 
on the part of Germany. So long as Belgium was neutral Germany had 
no right to enter the country whatever England did. 

2 The seizure of Luxemburg was a high-handed and illegal act; but 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 527 

of Brabant and Flanders refused to take alarm. ''Every one 
thought," wrote a Belgian, looking back on the causes of his 
exile, " 'they will not tight here. It will be just as in 1870.' " 
The German minister to King Albert's court was indefatiga- 
ble with reassuring interviews. He delivered himself to a 
Brussels journalist, "you may perhaps see your neighbor's 
roof in flames, but your own house will not catch fire. ' ' And 
Captain Brinckman, the military attache of the German lega- 
tion, on the very day that war was declared on Russia, tele- 
phoned to "Le XX e Siecle" (a great Brussels newspaper) to 
deny "in your largest type" that Belgians had anything to 
dread. 

"And Luxemburg?" asked the anxious editor. 

"It would not be surprising if certain precautions were 
taken, but you must not deduce any conclusions about Belgium 
from that." 

The Luxemburg affair however made King Albert's min- 
isters still more anxious. When on the morning of the 2nd of 
August, Herr von Below, the German minister, called on M. 
Davignon, the latter said they had received a very firm promise 
of inviolability from France, and yet nothing had come from 
Germany. His Excellency the minister replied that nothing 
indeed had come from Germany yet, but "we [Belgians] knew 
his personal opinion as to the feelings of security which we 
had a right to entertain towards our eastern neighbors." 
Thus the day glided by. There was still contentment and 
peaceful confidence in Brussels. Crowds of burghers and 
artisans crowded the narrow streets in family promenading, 
or went out toward the park of the "woods" toward Ter- 
vueren and all the other pleasure resorts in happy parties of 
picnicers. The afternoon also passed in peace. It was about 
seven o'clock. Various "musical societies" were returning to 
the city after country excursions, making the air cheerful and 
noisy with their instruments. The picnicers with their empty 
baskets and romping children were coming back from the 

the treaties securing the little country were by no means so inclusive in 
their nature as those for Belgium, and the Germans could claim a 
direct interest in the Luxemburg railways and customs system. 



528 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

"woods," when Herr von Below, Minister to King Albert from 
the German emperor, appeared again at M. Davignon's door 
at the Belgian foreign office. At last the desired official com- 
munique from Berlin — a long document, solemnly headed 
1 ' very confidential ! ' ' 

The Belgians had asked for an assurance of peace and in- 
violability in a conflict in which they had not the slightest 
interest or concern. They received instead — an ultimatum. 

The sum of the document was that Germany had learned 
that French forces "intend to march through Belgium against 
Germany. ' ' 1 Since it was unlikely Belgium could repel such 
an invasion Germany would have to "anticipate any such 
hostile attack." However, if Belgium interposed no resist- 
ance to the passage of German hosts, Belgian independence 
would be graciously preserved, the whole country evacuated 
at the end of the war, and payment made for any supplies 
taken or damage done. If Belgium should make the least 
resistance, however, "Germany will to her regret be compelled 
to consider Belgium as an enemy"; and in that event also 

i At this day there is no need of saying more of this alleged French 
design in Belgium than that it appears nothing but an impertinent lie. 
Possibly one of the numerous German spies had concocted some gossip 
on this point to curry favor with his masters. More likely it was 
manufactured out of the whole cloth. The proof that the story is a lie 
is easily obtained by the fact that the original French mobilization was 
towards the eastern frontier only, and entirely failed to concentrate 
towards Belgium in time to protect against invasion thence, much less 
to enter Belgium in any real force. 

On August 8th, 1914, William II telegraphed personally to President 
Wilson that Belgium "had to be violated by Germany on strategical 
grounds, news having been received that France was already preparing 
to enter Belgium." 

Neither William II nor Bethmann-Hollweg (speech in Reichstag, 
August 4th, 1914) nor any other German leader ever deigned to produce 
serious evidence, worthy of consideration for ten minutes in a self- 
respecting court, that France had any such designs; although it would 
have been of enormous value to Germany to introduce such testimony. 
The only reasonable conclusion is that German diplomats and leaders, 
including the very highest, had different standards of personal honor 
and veracity than those of the nations of inferior "Kultur" they af- 
fected te despise. The real reasons for the invasion have been already 
given. 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 529 

Germany could give no guarantee as to the future of Belgium 
when "left to the decision of arms." Twelve hours were 
granted in which to answer this ultimatum — until 7 a. m. the 
next morning, i. e., not enough time to hold any real consulta- 
tion as to what to do in a most awful crisis, much less sufficient 
time to consult with the only efficient adviser Belgium could 
have — England. 

It is recorded that the moment the Belgian Royal Council 
could gather at the palace, there was not one voice upraised 
for submission. The only questions were about the forms of 
answer and the organization of resistance. From time to time 
as the minister and councillors rose from their chairs and 
paced feverishly before the lighted windows, it is told how 
they heard the voices of belated city-folk drifting back from 
their excursions in the fine summer evening, — the fresh 
laughter of young girls, the trolling of popular songs, the 
wailing of sleepy children and even now and then the tremu- 
lous shouting of a drunken man. Within, until early dawn, 
King Albert and his council were facing like brave men the 
impending tragedy of an unmilitary nation of 7,000,000 
people against whom was about to be launched the most 
formidable war machine known to recorded history. It was 
4 A. m. when the council dissolved. King Albert and his min- 
isters could not know all the hideous future, but they did 
know that they had met an awful crisis worthily and had 
redeemed their souls. 

That morning (August 3rd) the Belgian reply was in the 
hands of the German minister. It recited the outrageousness 
of violating Belgian neutrality which France had given not 
the least sign of infringing; and then threw down the 
gauntlet, " [the Belgians] refuse to believe that the inde- 
pendence of Belgium can only be preserved at the price of 
the violation of her neutrality. If this hope is disappointed, 
the Belgian government is firmly resolved to repel with all 
the means in its power every attack upon its rights." King 
Albert sent a personal telegram at the same time to King 
George beseeching the "diplomatic" intervention of England 
— Belgian pride forbidding a direct appeal for military aid. 



530 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

"When this telegram reached London on the 3rd the British 
cabinet was still sitting. The pacifists within and without it 
were still busy. John Burns and Lord Morley were still 
wagging their tongues that the continent might blaze, France 
be crushed, Germany become ruler of Europe, and yet noth- 
ing must touch their precious schemes for land tenure reforms, 
poor relief and the reform of this and amelioration of that. 
In Hyde Park "popular" orators were cursing a war "in 
behalf of the Czar" and deriding all suggestions that William 
II was not full of benignity towards England. Pacifists 
caught by "The Great Illusion," were said to be frantically 
organizing processions with banners, and (it is alleged) en- 
devoring to hire gutter loafers by the scores to tramp the 
streets with "sandwiches" advertising the blessings of peace 
and the follies of war. So the witless sparrows twittered 
amid the ivy, but the thunder storm drew nigh. 

The appeal of the Belgians came now as the last decisive 
argument, to aid the men in the cabinet council who said that 
under the circumstances peace for England meant alike utter 
dishonor and equally certain physical ruin. To have sat still 
now while Belgium, trusting that England would live up to 
the treaty and would help her, was trampled over by Teutonic 
armies would have made the name "Briton" another name for 
craven the wide-world round. Sir Edward Grey received the 
appeal of the king of the Belgians just as he was about to 
leave the cabinet and speak in the House of Commons. The 
speech he delivered there on August 3rd really left no ques- 
tion in the minds of all decent Englishmen as to what their 
government should do. It was no longer a case, Grey plainly 
showed, of Serbia, or of Russia, or even of protecting France 
against the aggrandizement of Germany. All those things 
might be important, but they were swallowed up in the one 
obvious duty of redeeming the Belgian treaty. When Grey 
rose to speak in Parliament there were still many pacifists in 
England, ready to argue for peace at almost any price. 
When he finished a plain recital of how Germany had shuffled, 
twisted and evaded on the Belgian question, with this her ulti- 
matum to King Albert as her finale, the pacifists were beaten 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 531 

men. Most of them were no longer pacifists, the remnant were 
a dazed, helpless minority, silenced or whimpering witnesses 
of events over which they had not the slightest control. 

With the conscience and high consent of the British Em- 
pire back of him, on August 4th, Grey sent another telegram 
to Berlin. It was to be almost the last of a long series. 

Sir Edward Goschen went to the German foreign office 
on the afternoon of the 4th, 1 and fulfilled his instructions. 
He inquired of Jagow "in the name of His Majesty's govern- 
ment whether the Imperial German government would refrain 
from violating Belgian neutrality. Herr von Jagow at once 
replied he was sorry to say that his answer must be 'no,' as in 
consequence of the German troops having crossed the frontier 
that morning Belgian neutrality had already been violated. " 

The German added the already standardized excuses that 
it was a "matter of life and death" to them to get into France 
by the best roads and by the least defended way. Therefore, 
to his great regret, "it was impossible for them to draw 
back. ' ' 

Goschen had to wait until this answer could go on the wires 
to London and he could get his reply, although he knew 
what the reply would be. Almost at the moment the ambas- 
sador and Jagow had been in conference, Bethmann-Hollweg 
had been addressing the Reichstag, called in special, hasty 
session. Concerning Belgium he used words, already quoted 
at this present time of writing until they have grown thread- 
bare, yet destined assuredly to be quoted in many another 
history a thousand years from today. Speedily the chancellor 
was to regret his frankness, but his statement could never be 
recalled : ' ' Gentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity and 
necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxem- 
burg, perhaps already they have entered Belgian territory. 
Gentlemen, this is in contradiction to the rules of interna- 
tional law. . . . France could wait, but we could not 
wait. . . . 2 So we were forced to set aside the just protests 

i See end of chapter, note : Beyens, Von Jagow and Belgian Neu- 
trality. 
2 The chancellor repeated some .assertions that although France had 



532 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

of the Luxemburg and Belgian governments. The wrong — I 
speak openly — the wrong which we do now, we will try to 
make good again as soon as our military ends have been 
reached. When one is threatened as we are, and all is at 
stake, he can only think how he can hack his way through. ' ' 

Meantime the telegraph wires had been working. Sir Ed- 
ward Goschen received his final message from London so that 
he could deliver it about 7 p. m. It was fitting that the last 
of the series of ultimata should be delivered in Berlin. If 
Sir Edward went along Unter den Linden, on his errand, he 
must needs turn off upon the Wilhelmstrasse, and then go to 
a long one-story building built in the style of the early years 
of the nineteenth century. It was very bare and unpre- 
tentious, but within it, fifty years ago, had been planned the 
mighty changes which the Hohenzollerns had wrought with 
their swords in the map of Europe. Here in his long days of 
power Bismarck had had his seat; for this was the ministry 
for foreign affairs of the German empire. The visitor on 
entering went up a marble staircase, catching the musty smell 
of the masses of papers and documents in the huge ill- 
ventilated archives as he passed down the upper corridor. 
Then an attendant would politely escort him to a small room 
where he would meet the foreign secretary. Thus Goschen 
proceeded and thus he met Jagow. His instructions were 
clear and he delivered them. "I informed the secretary of 
state that unless the imperial government could give assur- 
ance by 12 o'clock that night that they would proceed no 
further with their violation of the Belgian frontier, and stop 
their advance, I had been instructed to demand my passports 
and to inform the imperial government that his Majesty's gov- 
ernment would have to take all steps in their power to uphold 
the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a treaty to 
which Germany was as much a party as themselves." 

Jagow regretfully replied that no reconsideration was pos- 

indeed promised to respect Belgian neutrality, "we knew that France 
stood prepared for an inroad." In other words he charged that France, 
besides intending to invade Belgium, intended to break a solemn pledge 
just given. Such assertions need, not now be refuted. See p. 528, note 1~ 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 533 

sible. Goschen asked then if he might take farewell of the 
chancellor. Jagow begged hirn to do so. Bethmann-Hollweg 
received his visitor "very much agitated." The plain truth 
seems to have been that up to the last instant Berlin had cher- 
ished the hope that, for all her threats and fury, England 
would not fight. No nations were ever psychologically further 
apart than the two "cousins," the German and the Anglo- 
Saxon. The apparent commercialism of much British life, the 
affectation of ease, the distaste for military discipline, the 
playing and dawdling with pacifism, the interruption of ' ' trade 
as usual" which a great war would inevitably cost, — these and 
a thousand alleged similar traits or factors had been hopelessly 
misinterpreted at the Berlin foreign office and by the great 
General Staff. The superb German spy system could tell 
its masters how many guns there were in the British arsenals 
and what were the plans of the newest dreadnaught, but it 
could not answer truthfully such a fundamental question as 
"Will Britain fight?" Seemingly as things drew to a climax 
Bethmann-Hollweg had realized all was not well at London 
and had tried to put on the brakes, but the war-party was now 
in complete control in Berlin and had thrust him aside. Now 
the last hope was shattered. Instead of humiliating Russia 
without a war, instead of fighting Russia and France simply, 
the war was bound to assume simply incalculable proportions. 
No wonder the chancellor lost self-control and "began a 
harangue which lasted for about twenty minutes." 

England was going to war for "neutrality; ' neutrality , ' a 
word which in war-time had been so often disregarded ; — just 
for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war ! ' ' 
So Bethmann-Hollweg continued, his grey-bearded face doubt- 
less purple with passion, his tall form leaning toward the 
British ambassador, whilst the other, with pale countenance, 
maintaining the habitual coolness of his race, answered that 
if Germany wished to talk of "life and death interests," he 
also "wished him to understand that it was so to speak a 
matter of ' life and death ' for the honor of Great Britain that 
she should keep her solemn engagement to do her uttermost 
to defend Belgium. . . . That solemn compact simply had to 



534 THE ROOTS OF THE WAK 

be kept, or what confidence could any one have in engagements 
given by Great Britain in the future." ''But at what a price 
will that compact have been kept ! ' ' groaned the chancellor. 
Clearly he was "so excited, so overcome by the news of our 
action, and so little disposed to hear reason that I [Goschen] 
refrained from adding fuel to the flame by further argu- 
ment," and speedily went away. 

That night a cursing, roaring crowd, brushing aside the 
usually over-watchful police, cast cobble-stones and lumps of 
coal into the front windows of the British embassy, where 
excited attaches were busily packing their portmanteaus. 
The next morning all the world was reading the dispatch from 
London that Great Britain had declared war on Germany the 
preceding midnight. England had gone in. Hereafter, for a 
period infinitely longer and more terrible than any man in 
1914 could have imagined, the history of the world was to be 
written not by the diplomat but by the soldier, w T hile "the 
boundaries of Europe were being retraced in blood." 

On the night of August 4th, the last of the terrible "Twelve 
Days." came the end of that era in European history which 
began that fateful night in 1870 when Otto von Bismarck re- 
wrote the Ems dispatch from King William. This epoch 
had been ushered in by a deed which, if it had failed, would 
have been branded as an act of outrageous depravity: but 
which, since it succeeded, was to be lauded as the master 
stroke of genius. It was to end with the chancellor of the 
German empire calling a most solemn international treaty a 
"scrap of paper," when the ambassador of a great power 
talked of truth, justice and faithfulness between nation and 
nation. The dawn of this epoch had seen the consolidation of 
the German states under the domination of Prussia into the 
formidable German empire. It found its sunset when, disre- 
garding all established sanctions, covenants and moral 
processes, the rulers of this new empire surrendered them- 
selves to schemes of world conquest which would take them 
straight along the paths of imperial Rome. Manifestly, there- 
fore, for years there could be no more peace in the world. 

In the London "Times," on the morning of August 6th, 



REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 535 

1914, appeared this sonnet by William Watson. It spoke the 
sentiments not merely of England and France, but with in- 
creasing clearness those of almost every non-Teutonized folk 
throughout the wide earth. 

TO THE TROUBLER OF THE WORLD 

"At last we know you, War-Lord. You, that flung 

The gauntlet down, fling down the mask you wore, 

Publish your heart, and let its pent hate pour, 
You that had God forever on your tongue. 
We are old in war, and if in guile we are young, 

Young also is the spirit that evermore 

Burns in our bosom even as heretofore, 
Nor are these thews unbraced, these nerves unstrung. 
We do not with God's name make wanton play : 

We are not on such easy terms with Heaven : 
But in Earth's hearing we can verily say, 

'Our hands are pure; for peace, for peace we have striven; 

And not by earth shall soon he be forgiven, 
Who lit the fire accursed that flames to-day!'" 

ATTITUDE OF ENGLAND, AUGUST 1, 1914 

The writer may register a personal opinion, having been in England 
at the outbreak of hostilities, with a reasonable opportunity to observe 
events and opinions, that if Belgium had been left intact, England 
would not have entered the war during its opening stages, although her 
"neutrality" might have been very unbenevolent to Germany. Prob- 
ably after a little, the pressure of her more intelligent classes would 
have compelled her to go into a contest which, if Germany had won 
promptly, would have left England in ruinous isolation facing aggran- 
dized Teutonia. Whether however England would have entered soon 
enough to save France from complete overthrow, I dare not state. 

From the outset nearly all Englishmen accustomed to study foreign 
affairs believed it their clear duty to "go in"; but the apathy and be- 
wilderment of the less educated classes was pathetic. For some days 
after war was declared they could not realize anything serious had 
really happened. August 9th, in a small English city, I attended the 
regular Sunday morning service in the Wesleyan church. A typical, 
respectably dressed, but not aristocratic audience was present. Neither 
in prayer, sermon, nor less formal remarks was there the slightest refer- 
ence to the outbreak of war. No patriotic hymn was sung. All the an- 
nouncements were of a routine order, and the only appeal made was for 



536 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

a liberal contribution for a mission in Africa. No one present at that 
service would have imagined that Great Britain was at war. 

Many Church of England circles were no more enkindled. I know 
specifically of a church where the day before war was declared the vicar 
explained to his flock that it was impossible for them to have any 
prayers suitable for the dread occasion because "the bishop had not 
enjoined any," and he (the vicar) "did not feel the case serious enough 
to read any unusual prayers upon his own unauthorized initiative." 

BEYENS, YON JAGOYY AND BELGIAN NEUTRALITY 

At !) A. m. on this day Baron Beyens had already called on Von 
Jagow to tell him of the final determination of the Belgian government 
to resist to the uttermost. He asked Jagow what the Germans would 
have said of Belgium if before French threats she had yielded a passage 
though against Germany. "You would have said . . . that we were 
cowards, incapable of defending our neutrality and unworthy of an in- 
dependent existence." To this Jagow made no reply. 

After some further argument by Beyens, the envoy said that it was 
impossible for Belgium to consent to the German demands when "In 
recognition of our loyalty [to neutrality] you wish to make our 
country the battlefield for your struggle with France, and we know 
what devastation modern warfare brings with it. . . . You must recog- 
nize that no other reply [to your demands] was possible." 

Jagow was silent or evasive, but in the face of Beyens' persistence 
replied at last, "I recognize it, I understand your reply. I understand 
it as a private individual but as a secretary of state I have no opinion to 
express." He then reiterated the old argument that "a rapid march 
through Belgium was a question of life or death," for Germany, and 
every other consideration had to give way to that. 

There is little doubt that the German General Staff committed at the 
outset of the war the grievous blunder of underestimating the tenacity 
and resistance of the French, and the no less serious blunder of under- 
estimating the ability of the Russians to effect fairly rapid mobilization. 
I may give as a civilian, non-military opinion the judgment that if the 
Germans had stood on the strict defensive against France, had let Bel- 
gium alone, and had concentrated all their main energies upon a sudden 
drive against Russia, the war would have ended in a comparatively 
short time with the utter defeat of the czar. England probably would 
have stood neutral or at most only fought Germany in a naval way, and 
the French would soon have been glad to make peace after a few brave 
but unsuccessful offensives into Lorraine, which could not have been 
pushed home desperately as soon as the French people were convinced 
that Germany's quarrel was with Russia, and that William II did 
not intend a new invasion of France. 



RULERS OF EUROPE, PRIME MINISTERS OF GREAT 

BRITAIN AND CHANCELLORS OF GERMANY, 

SINCE 1870 



Great Britain 


Michaelis, 


1917 


Queen and Kings: 




Hertling, 


1917- 


Victoria, 


1837-1901 


France 




Edward VII, 


1901-1910 


Presidents : 




George V, 


1910- 


Thiers, 


1871-1873 


P rime H in is t e rs : 




MacMahon, 


1873-1879 


Gladstone (L), 


1868-1874 


Grevy, 


1879-1887 


Disraeli (C), 


1874-18S0 


Car not, 


1887-1894 


Gladstone (L), 


1880-1885 


Casimir-Perier, 


1894-1895 


Salisbury (C), 


1885-1886 


Faure, 


1895-1899 


Gladstone (L), 


1886 


Loubet, 


1899-1906 


Salisbury (C), 


1886-1892 


Fallieres, 


1906-1913 


Gladstone (L), 


1892-1894 


Poincare, 


1913- 


Rosebery (L), 


1894-1895 


Austria 




Salisbury (C), 


1895-1902 


Emperors: 




Balfour (C), 


1902-1905 


Franz Josef I, 


1848-1916 


Campbell-Bannerman 


(L), 


Charles I, 


1916- 




1905-1908 


Russia 
Czars : 




Asquith (L), 


1908-1916 


Alexander II, 


1855-1881 


Lloyd George (L), 


1916- 


Alexander III, 


1881-1894 


L = Liberal. 




Nicholas II, 


1894-1917 


C = Conservative 




Italy 




Germany 




Kings : 




Emperors : 




Victor Emmanuel II, 


1861-1878 


William I, 


1871-1888 


Humbert, 


1878-1900 


Frederick III, 


1888 


Victor Emmanuel III, 


1900- 


William II, 


1888- , 


ROUMANU 




Chancellors : 




Prince Carol I, 


1866-1914 


Bismarck 


1871-1890 


(As "Tsar"), 


1908- 


Caprivi, 


1890-1894 


King Ferdinand, 


1914- 


Hohenlohe, 


1894-1900 


Turkey 




Biilow, 


1900-1909 


Sultans : 




Bethmann-Hollweg, 


1909-1917 


Abdul Aziz 


1861-1876 



537 



538 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

Murad V, IS 76 Serbia 

Abdul Hamid II, 1S76-1909 Kings: 

Mohammed V, 1909- Milau IV, 1868-1889 

Greece Alexander, 18S9-1903 

Kings: Peter, 1903- 
George I, 1S62-1913 Bulgaria 

Constantine, 1913-1917 Prince Alexander, 1879-1887 

Alexander, 1917- " Ferdinand, 1887- 

(As "Tsar'), 1908- 

GROWTH OF THE BRITISH, GERMAN, AND FRENCH 
COLONIAL EMPIRES, SINCE 1S70 

British Colonies, Acquired since 1870 with Approximate Area 

and Population of Each 
Pacific and East Indies: 

Area Population 
(Sq. Miles) 

Fiji 7,435 139,541 

Tonga 390 23,000 

Federated Malay States 27,506 1,036,999 

Other Ma lav States: 

Kelantan* 5,500 286,750 

Trengganu 6,000 154,037 

Kedal 3,S00 245,986 

Pedis 300 32,746 

State of Johore 9,000 180,412 

Brunei (in Borneo) 4,000 30,000 

North Borneo 31,106 208,183 

Sarawak (in Borneo) 42,000 500,000 

Papua (Brit. New Guinea) 90,540 269,900 

Africa: 

Nigeria 336,080 17,000.000 

Somaliiand 68,000 310,000 

Beehuanaland 275,000 125,350 

Zululand 10,424 185,000 

British East Africa 246,822 4,038,000 

Rhodesia 438,575 1,744,559 

Zanzibar 640 134.069 

Uganda 121,437 2,893,494 

Nvasaland 39,315 1,000,000 

Ashanti 287,814 



BULEKS OF EUROPE 



539 



Area 
(Sq. Miles) 

Orange Free State 50,389 

Transvaal 110,426 

Swaziland 6,536 

Added to India: 

Northwest Frontier Province 13,418 

British Baluchistan (1854-1876) 54,228 

German Colonies, Acquired Since 1870 

Area 

In Africa: (Sq. Miles) 

Togo 33.700 

Kamerun 191,130 

German South-west Africa 322,450 

German East Africa 384,180 

In Asia: 

Kiauchau (from China) 200 

In the Pacific: 

German New Guinea 95,160 



Samoan Islands, etc. 



1,000 



Population 

528,174 

1,686,212 

99,959 

2,106.933 
414,412 



Population 

1,031,978 

2,648,720 

79,556 

7,645,770 

168,900 

600,000 
34,579 



In Asia: 

Annam 1 
Tonking 
Laos 



French Colonies, Acquired Since 1870 

with Cambodia 
and Coehin- 
China 309,980 



Area 
In Africa: (Sq. Miles) 

Algeria 222,067 

Sahara 1,544,000 

Tunis 45,779 

Senegal 1 with 

Upper Senegal Guinea 

and Niger J- and 
Dahomey Ivory (inclusive area) 

Mauritania J Coast 1,585,810 

Congo 553,030 

Madagascar 226,015 

In Oceania: 

New Caledonia, (protectorate earlier) 7,200 
Tahiti, etc. " " l r 544 



14,500,000 
Population 

5,563,828 

800,000 

1,878,620 



(total pop.) 
7,500,000 
3,900,000 
3,257,895 

50,500 
30,600 



540 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

POPULATIONS OF THE GREAT EUROPEAN POWERS 
IN THE GENERATION BEFORE 1914 

1875 1SS5 1905 1914 

Great Britain .... 33,110,167 36,707,418 43,221,123 46,089,249 

Germany 42,727,360 46,844,926 60,641,278 67,812,000 

France 36,905,7SS 3S,21S,903 39,252,267 39,602,258 

Italy 27,482,174 29,361,032 33,733,198 35,597,784 

Austria-Hungary, 

(excluding Bosnia) 35,901,435 39,224,511 45,405,267 49,882,331 

Russian Empire, 

(including Siberia) 86,450,751 104,785,761 146,796,600 178,378,800 

MERCHANT SHIPPING OF BRITAIN, GERMANY, AND 
FRANCE 

(Net tonnage of steam and sailing vessels registered.)* 
1875 1S85 1905 1914 

Great Britain .... 6,152,000 7,387,000 10,735,582 12,415,204 

Germany 1,258,381 1,294,288 2,352,575 3,320,071 

France 1,028,228 1,033,829 1,349,327 1^82,416 

* The "gross tonnage," by which vessels are often measured, would 
would make each of these figures rather more than 50% greater. 



USEFUL BOOKS FOR 
GENERAL STUDIES OF EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY 

Prepared by Mason W. Tyler, Ph.D. 



A Summaries of Policy to 1914. 

1. Seymour, ''The Diplomatic Background of the War," New 

Haven, Yale University Press. 
Covers in broad outline the period 1870-1914. 
Confined to European diplomatic history. 

2. Sehmitt, "England and Germany," Princeton, Princeton 

Univ. Press. 
Deals with relations of England and Germany merely. 
Covers period from about 1900 to 1914. 

3. Lemonon, "L'Europe et la Politique Britannique 1882- 

1911," Paris, Alcan. 
In French. Covers relations of England and the Con- 
tinental powers within the dates given. 

4. Pinon, "France et Allemagne," Paris, Perrin. 

A brief study of the relations of the two powers, 1870- 
1914. 

5. Reventlow, "Deutschlands auswartige Politik," Berlin, Mit- 

tler and Son. 
The foreign policy of Germany 1890-1914. Interest 
somewhat concentrated on naval affairs. 

6. Fullerton, ''Problems of Power," New York, Scribners. 

A study of economic questions and of the growth of pub- 
lie opinion, 1880-1912. 

7. Reinsch, "World Politics," New York, Macmillan. 

Economic imperialism, especially in the Far East. 

8. Gibbons, "The New Map of Europe," New York, Century. 

Brief introduction, followed by detailed study of the Bal- 
kans, 1908-1914. Excellent. 

9. Tardieu, "France and the Alliances," New York, Macmillan. 

France's foreign policy in the early years of the twen- 
tieth century. 

541 



542 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

B Commentaries on Diplomatic Methods. 

1. Lippman, "The Stakes of Diplomacy," New York, 

Heubsch. 
Argues for a world federation for the exploitation of 
territories. Keen and thoughtful criticism on the 
relation of public opinion to foreign policy. 

2. Weyl, "American World Policies," New York, Macmillan. 

American policy considered in relation to the new situa- 
tion. A thoughtful commentary. 
3. Brailsford, "The War of Steel and Gold," New York, Mac- 
millan. 
Traces the present situation back to capitalistic imperi- 
alism. A Liberal's criticism of the pre-war diplomacy. 
[Honest pacifism. W. S. D.] 
C America and the War. 

1. Roosevelt, "America and the World War," New York, 
Scribners. 
Published in the early days of the war. The American 
nationalist position eloquently stated. 
2. "The War Peril," Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press. 

Essays on various phases of the war in their relation to 
America. 



II 
ENGLAND 

1. Gretton, "A Modern History of the English People" (2 volumes), 

London, Richards, Ltd. 
A breezy journalistic history of England from 1880 to about 
1912. 

2. Slater, "The Making of Modern England," Boston, Houghton 

Mifflin. 
Especial emphasis on economic questions. Covers the period 
1815-1912. [Largely ignores foreign questions. Not a con- 
tinuous history. Ultra-radical. W. S. D.] 

3. Morley, "Gladstone" (3 volumes), New York, Macmillan. 

The~ best introduction to liberal England 1850-1900. 

4. Lowell, "The Government of England," New York, Macmillan. 

The classic account of English government. 

5. Lucas, "The British Empire," London, Macmillan. 

Historical account of the British Empire. 



BOOKS ON EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY 543 

6. Curtis, "The Problems of the Commonwealth," Toronto, Mac- 
millan. 
An analysis of the bases for Imperial Federation. 

Ill 
FRANCE 

1. Wright, "France under the Third Republic," Boston, Houghton, 

Mifflin. 
A good brief account. 

2. Guerard, "French Civilization in the Nineteenth Century," Lon- 

don, Fisher Unwin. 
A study of the tendencies in France since 1815. A little in- 
clined to be radical and anti-clerical. Should be read in 
connection with the following: 

3. Dimnet, "France Herself Again," London, Chatto and Windus. 

Also a study of tendencies in France since about 1870. Rather 
clerical and conservative in tone. 
i. Sabatier, "France Today," New York, Dutton. 

A clear and broad-minded study of the French religious situa- 
tion. 
5. Poincaire, "How France Is Governed," London, Fisher Unwin. 
A good account of French government under the Third Repub- 
lic by the present President. 

IY 
GERMANY 

1. Fife, "The German Empire Between Two Wars," New York, Mac- 

millan. 
Covers the history of Germany 1870-1914 in its broadest rela- 
tions. 

2. Dawson, "The Evolution of Modern Germany," New York, Scrib- 

ners. 
More confined to economic questions and politics. Penetrating 
analysis. 

3. Biilow, "Imperial Germany," New York, Henry Holt. 

The German official apologia by the former Chancellor. 

4. Naumann, "Central Europe," New York, Knopf. 

Moderate pan-Germanism, urges a federation of central Europe 
under German hegemony. 



544 THE ROOTS OF THE WAR 

5. Rohrbach, "Germany's Isolation," Chicago, McClurg. 

Moderate pan-Geirnanism in the colonial field. 

6. "Conquest and Kultur," United States Government (Red, White 

and Blue Series). 
Extracts from the more extreme pro-Germans, as well as the 
moderates, to show the world-policy of this group. 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

1. Steed, "The Hapsburg Monarchy," New York, Scribner. 

A penetrating study of modern Austria. Little consideration 
of the question of nationalities. 

2. von Schierbrand, "Austria-Hungary," New York, Stokes. 

A somewhat favorable view of the future of Austria. 

3. Seton-Watson, "German, Slav and Magyar," London, Williams 

and Norgate. 

4. Seton-Watson, "The Southern Slav Question and the Hapsburg 

Monarchy," London, Constable. 
Both are rather unfavorable but scholarly accounts of the 
question of nationalities in Austria. 

VI 
THE NEAR EAST 

1. Miller, "The Ottoman Empire," Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. 

Press. 
Reallv a history of the Near East in the nineteenth century 
(1815-1913). 

2. Marriott, "The Near East," Oxford, Clarendon Press. 

Same subject but broader in scope. Covers period from Mid- 
dle Ages to 1914. 

3. Pinon, "L'Europe et L'Empire Ottoman," Paris, Perrin. 

4. Pinon, "L'Europe et la Jeune Turquie," Paris, Perrin. 

Two valuable commentaries on the Near East covering the 
period from 1900 to the Balkan Wars. 

5. "A Diplomat," "War and Nationalism in the Near East," Oxford, 

Clarendon Press. 
More a commentary than a history. Extremely suggestive. 

6. Lewin, "The German Road to the East," London, Heinemann. 

Violently anti-German accounts of German policy in the Near 
East. 



BOOKS ON EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY 545 

VII 
MOROCCO 

1. Tardieu, "Le Conference dAlgeciras," Paris, Calmann-Levy. 

2. Tardieu, "Le Prince de Billow/' Paris, Calmann-Levy. 

3. Tardieu, "Le Mystere dAgadir," Paris, Calmann-Levy. 

Together they constitute the best apology for French policy in 
Morocco 1905-1912. 

4. More, "Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy," London, Labor Press. 

An attack on English and French policy in Morocco. 
For extensive critical bibliography on "War Causes" see History 
Teachers' Magazine, March, 1918. Excellent. 



INDEX 



Abdul-Aziz, deposed. 80 
Abdul -Hamid, his evil reign, 
268 ff. 
becomes friendly with Ger- 
many, 270 
absurd methods of despotism, 

270-271 
corrupt administration. 272 
visited by William II, 273 
massacres Armenians, 274-278 
defies England over Armenian 

question, 278-270 
leans more on Germany. 270 
surrounded by gang of harpies 

and eorruptioni*ts, 283 
submits to Young Turks and 
proclaims again Constitu- 
tion, 284 
his favorites forced to dis- 
gorge, 285 
plots for a reaction, 2S6 
overpowered and deposed, 286- 
287 
Agadir incident, 417 
Albanians, 68 

revolt against "Young Turks," 
430 
Alexander II, Czar; frees the 

Serfs, 54 
Alexander, King of Serbia, 260 

murdered. 261 
Alexander, prince of Bulgaria, 

251-256 
Algeciras conference, 412 ff. 
Alsace-Lorraine, 

demanded by Bismarck, 20 
ceded by France, 22 
problem of from French stand- 
point, 128 



547 



German arguments for seizing 

in 1871, 120, 134 
French pride injured by loss of, 

132 
keeps alive desire for revanche, 

133 
helped to create war of 1914, 

135 
not assimilated by Germany, 

239 
vain hopes of Germanization, 

240 
petty persecutions in, 241, 244- 

245 
enforcement of military service, 

242 
Manteuffel's administration in, 

243 
friction between natives and 

Germans in, 244-245 
William II's treatment of, 246- 

247 
allowed partial "autonomy,'"' 246 
Zabern incident in, 247 
embitters relations between 

France and Germany. 248 
America, German naval designs 

on, 360-361 nt. 
Andrassy, 

issues warning to Sultan, 78 
makes alliance with Germanv, 

314 
"Angell, Norman," see Lane, R. 

N. A. 
Arabi Pasha, revolts in Egypt, 102 

overthrown at Tel-el-Kebir, 103 
Arbitration, progress of, 329 
Austria [Austria-Hungary], 
ill-compacted conglomerate, 44 



548 



INDEX 



Austria — continued 

defeated in 1859 and 1S6G, 45 
failure of constitution of 1800, 

47 
new dual organization of 1SG7, 

4S 
foreign aspirations after 1871, 

50 
ill-compaeted monarchy, 289 
shows an Asiatic impress, 290 
German lands in, 290, 292 
fails in process of fusion, 201 
Hungarian element in, 293 
Slavic element in, 293-204 
Roumanian element in, 294 
Italian elements in, 295 
Empire organized in 18G7, 295 
Czechs of Bohemia in, 29G-298 
Hungarian problems, 299 fF. 
dark problems of, 306 
makes alliance with Germany, 

314 
annexes Bosnia, 421 fF. 



Balkan War ( Second ) , 

quarrel of the Balkan Allies, 

441-444 
interference of Austria, 443 
Bulgaria forces war, 444 
Bulgars defeated by Greeks and 

Serbs, 445-446 
intervention of Roumania, 446 
Treaty of Bucharest, 447 
not a final settlement, 448 

Bazaine, appointed to command, 11 
surrenders Metz, 18 

Belfort, retained by France, 21 

Belgium, its neutrality, 520 fT. 
safe in 1870, 522 
fears German menace, 523 ff. 
Grey stirs in its behalf, 525 
believes self secure, 526-528 
receives German ultimatum, 528 
refuses German demands, 529 

Berlin, Congress of, 91-93 
Treaty of 94-96 
unsatisfactory results of treaty, 



Serbia in 1914, 483 
becomes enraged over Bosnian 

friction, 484 
given pretext for war by murder 

of Archduke, 487 
addresses ultimatum to Serbia, 

in 1914, 493 ff. 
rejects Serbian reply, 499 
declares war on Serbia, 500 
shows more compliant spirit 

than Germany, 508 

Bagdad Railway, granted to Ger- 
man exploiters, 282 
Balkan Peninsula, various races 

in, 64 
Balkan War (First), 

Causes of, 432 

outbreak of, 435 

battles of, 436 ff. 

disastrous defeat of Turks, 439 

treaty of London, 440 



Berlin memorandum, to Turkey, 80 

Bernhardi, "Germany and the 

Next War," summarized, 363 

ff. 

Bethmann-Hollweg, chancellor, 214 

makes proposals for neutrality 

of England, 503-504 
makes war speech in Reichstag, 

531 
"Scrap of paper" incident, 533 
Beyens, has interview with Von 

Jagow, 536 
Bismarck, 

schemes war with France, 1 
dictates terms to France, 20 
dominates Europe, 31 
genius of, 32 
principles of, 33 
a master diplomat, 34 
diplomatic duplicity, 35, 36 
presides at Congress of Berlin, 
91 



INDEX 



549 



Bismarck — continued 

blood and iron policy, 173 

provokes war with Denmark, 
174 

provokes war with Austria, 174 

organizes North German Con- 
federation, 175 

organizes German Empire, 177- 
178 

always sustained by William I, 
200 

engages in "Kulturkampf," 201 

conflict with Socialists, 202 

passes accident and sickness in- 
surance acts, 203 

discourages colonial policy, 203 

dismissed by William II, 205- 
207 

his diplomatic theories after, 
308 

cultivates good relations with 
England, 309 

permits "war-scare" of 1875, 
311 ff. 

estranges Russia by policy at 
Berlin Congress, 313 

negotiates alliance with Aus- 
tria, 314 

concludes "triple alliance" with 
Italy, 318 
Black Sea, rights therein re- 
claimed by Russians in 1870, 
57 
Boers, German sympathy for, 381 
Bosnia, 

involved with the Croatia-Sla- 
vonia question, 305 

revolt in, 77 

assigned to Austria by Berlin 
treaty, 94 

annexed by Austria, 421 

consequences of act in Europe, 
422 ff. 
Britain (England), 

position of in 1870, 40 

great navy, 41 



Britain — continued 

interested in internal politics, 41 

retains a professional army, 42 

hated by Germany, 374 

resemblances to Germany, 375 

quarrel with Germany not 
merely commercial, 376 

becomes friendly with America, 
377 

German dislike for British 
traits, 378 

angered by Krtiger telegram, 
380; and by German attitude 
in Boer war, 381 

develops great distrust of Ger- 
many, 388 

becomes friendly with Russia, 
456 

in position of great doubt over 
Serbian crisis, 518-520 

swept into war by Belgian viola- 
tion, 530 ff . 

declares war on Germany, 534 
Bucharest, Treaty of, 447 
Bulgaria, 

before 1871, 72 

massacre in 1876, 81 

cut down to a "small Bulgaria" 
by Treaty of Berlin, 95 

state of after founding in 1878, 
250 

Alexander, prince of, 251 

annexes Eastern Roumelia, 252 

defeats Serbia, 253-254 

Prince Alexander abdicates, 255 

Stambulov as prime-minister, 
256-258 

Ferdinand becomes prince, 257 

declares its independence, 421 

enters First Balkan War, 433 ff . 

wins victories over Turks, 437- 
438 

forces Second Balkan War, 443 

is utterly defeated, 446, 447 
Btilow [Von], low opinion of Ger- 
man political capacity, 171 



550 



INDEX 



Biilow — continued 

becomes chancellor, 
Bundesrat, 178-179 



214 



Cambon, French Ambassador at 
Berlin, reports Kaiser plot- 
ting war, 223 
reports belligerent sentiments in 
Germany, 478 

Capriva, 213-214 

Cavour, great work of, 141-43 

Churchill, Winston, proposes "na- 
val holiday," 398 

Crete, Greek intervention in and 
separation from Turkey, 263- 
26G 

Croatia-Slavonia, problems of, 303- 
304 
involved in Bosnian question, 
304-305 

Cromer [Lord], able rule in Egypt, 
113 

Crown Prince Frederick William 
of Germany, favors the Pan- 
Germanists, 371-372 

Czechs [Bohemians], 296-298 

Danes under German rule, 228 
Dekasse, forced out by Germany, 

411 
Diplomacy, duplicity of in Bis- 
marck's day, 36 
Disarmament: see Hague Peace 

Conferences 
Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) 
prime minister of England, 78 
anti-Russian policy, 79 
insists on revision of Treaty of 

San Stefano, 89-90 
dominant personality at Berlin, 
91-93 
Dreyfus case, importance of to 

France, 124, 125 
Dual Alliance [Russia and 
France], 320 ff. 
France great gainer by it, 323 



Duelling and Military Courts, 
Prussian, 223 

Eastern Roumelia, annexed to 

Bulgaria, 252-53 
Edward VII, great influence of, 

384 ff. 
Egypt: decidedly oriental land in 
1871, 98 
execrable government by Khe- 
dives, 99 
revolt of Arabia in, 102 
British intervention in, 103 ff. 
reforms by British in, 105 ff. 
Ems telegram, 2 
England, see Britain 
Entente Cordiale, 386 ff. 
Eqnatoria [Egyptian Sudan], 106 
revolt of Mahdi in, 107 
conquest of Mahdists, 110-112 



Fashoda incident, 112-13 
Ferdinand, becomes prince of Bul- 
garia, 257 
France, 
temporary ruin of in 1871, 27 
former prestige of, 28 
unfortunate traits uppermost in 

1914, 115 
war in 1914 brings out true 

French qualities, 110-117 
diplomatic isolation of, after 

1871, 309 ff. 
escapes "war-scare" of 1875, 

311 
draws closer to Russia, 318 
financial dealings with Russia, 

319 
concludes dual alliance with 

Russia, 320 ff. 
increases army in 1913, 479 
calmly awaits German crisis, 

513 
receives German ultimatum, 515 
See also "Third Republic" 



INDEX 



551 



Franco-Prussian War, declared by 
France, 7 

Frankfort, Peace of, 22 

Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, mur- 
dered, 485-486 

Franz-Joseph, character of, 46 

Frederick III [Kaiser], brief 
reign, 205 

Frederick the Great, his genius 
and extremely cynical moral- 
ity, 166-167 

Frederick William IV [of Prus- 
sia], unstable man, foe of de- 
mocracy, 16S-171 

French Colonial Empire, 137-138 

Gambetta, raises armies in France, 

17 
George V, becomes king of Eng- 
land, 399 
Germany, exalted position of, 29 

peaceful growth after 1870, 30 

not democratic, 33 

Empire proclaimed at Ver- 
sailles, 162 

without real political freedom, 
163, 165 

German religious forces not for 
democracy, 164, 165 

supersedes many petty states, 
165 

Constitution of, 178 

at mercy of military, 191-192 

great increase in population and 
wealth, 194-196 

general contentment of people 
under, 225 

non-German population dissat- 
isfied, 226 ff. 

holds non-German white races 
in subjection, 227 

becomes friendly with Turkey, 
270 

influence in Turkey becomes 
very great, 281 

does not save Abdul-Hamid, 286 



Germany — continued 

full of schemes for expansion 
soon after 1871, 352 

growth of Pan-Germanist senti- 
ment in, 354 

militant mission of, explained 
by Bernhardi, 366 ff. 

develops hatred for Britain, 374 
ff. 

sympathizes with Boers, 381 

steady development of anti-Brit- 
ish feeling, 389 

wrath at British "navalism," 
391 

instances of anti-British senti- 
ments, 401 

intervenes in Morocco, 410 ff. 

angered at settlement favorable 
to France, 418 

secret report in 1913 on pros- 
pects of war, 476 ff. 

schemes for exciting Mohamme- 
dans against England, 477 

becomes more cordial with Eng- 
land just before crisis, 478 

increases army in 1914, 481 

war with Serbia and Russia 
plotted in July, 1914, 491 

refuses Grey's proposals for me- 
diation with Austria, 500 

takes over Austria's quarrel 
with Russia, 502 

hesitates to declare war on ac- 
count of England, 510 

sends ultimatum to Russia and 
France, 513 

declares war on Russia, 515-516 

refuses promises as to Belgium, 
526 

sends ultimatum to Belgium, 
528 
German cities, great increase in 

size and wealth, 197 
German colonies: how acquired 
and insufficiency of, 360 

possible fields for expansion, 361 



552 



INDEX 



German merchant marine, increase 

of, 196 
German national temper, marked 

change in, 197-199 
German navy, growth of, 382 
profits by new "Dreadnaughts," 

393 
continued growth despite Hal- 
dane's mission, 397-398 
German people, not temperamen- 
tally and historically trained 
for freedom, 163-165 
Von Biilow on their political un- 
fitness, 171 
German Revolution of 1848, prom- 
ise and disaster, 169-171 
its failure calamity for entire 
world, 170 
Gladstone, denounces Bulgarian 

atrocities, 81 
Gordon, sent to Sudan, 107 
cut off in Khartoum, 108 
Goschen, delivers British ultima- 
tum at Berlin, 531 ff. 
"Great Illusion," 468 ff. 
Greece, 

position in Balkan lands, 65 
war for independence, 66 
problems of Kingdom of Greece, 

66-68 
Involved with Turkey over 

Crete, 263 
disastrous war with Turkey, 

264 
In First Balkan War, 433 ff . 
Grey (Sir Edward), tries to avert 
war, 497 ff. 
warns Germany England might 

not stay neutral, 504 
makes peace proposals, 508 
in position of great difficulty, 

519 
convinces House of Commons, 
530 
Grotius, services in developing in- 
ternational law, 326 



Hague Peace Conference (First), 
summoned by Czar, 335 
reasons for gathering, 336 
meeting of, 337 

German delegates oppose dis- 
armament, 338 
and also arbitration, 340-341 
Hague Peace Conference (Second), 
practically a failure owing to 
German opposition, 339 ff. 342 
Haldane (Lord) makes visit to 
Berlin, 396 
fails to negotiate naval under- 
standing, 398 
Hohenlohe, 214 
Hungarian [Magyars] race, 292- 

293 
Hungary, "Magyarization" in, 
299-301 
resistance of non-Magyar races 
in, 302 ff. 



International Law, its attempts to 
ameliorate conduct and re- 
sults of war, 325 ff. 

developed at Congress of Paris, 
328 

and at Geneva (1868), 328 

and at Brussels (1874), 329 
Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egvpt, 
98 

gross extravagance of, 100 

deposed, 101 
Italia Irredenta, problem of, 156 

ff. 
Italy, 

foreign outlook after 1870, 43 

its domestic and foreign prob- 
lems, 140 

how unified, 141 

onlv partiallv consolidated in 
1861, 143, 147 

constitution of, 144 

weakness of political system of, 
144 



INDEX 



553 



Italy — continued 

absence of a reliable party sys- 
tem in, 145 
franchise laws of, 146-147 
geographical divisions in, 147 
South Italy, at variance with 

North, 148-149 
Papal problem in Italy serious, 

149-153 
relations with France, 154 
friction over Tunis, 155 
Italia Irredenta, 156-159 
German commercial interests in, 

159 
German attempts to dominate 

Italian policy, 160 
their failure in 1915, 161 
enters triple alliance, 315 ff. 
seizes Tripoli, 427 ff. 

Jingoism, origin of name, 90 
Junkers [Prussian], great influ- 
ence in all Germany, 187-188 
ambitions and traits of, 188-189 

Khartoum, taken by Mahdi, 108 

retaken by British, 109 
Khedives (rulers of Egypt), 98 ff. 

Lane, R. N. A. ("Norman An- 
gell"), writes "Great Illu- 
sion," 468 
pacifist theories of, 469 ff. 
considers Belgium secure, 470 
argues Germany could not rob 

England, 470-471 
denounced by Frederic Harrison, 

471 
likens soldiers to "Vikings," 472 
regards Germany as harmless, 474 
German Crown Prince receives 

his book, 475 
declares England should keep 

out of war in 1914, 475 
his book in India, 487 
his work in America, 488 



"Lokal-Anzeiger," announces mo- 
bilization, 511 

Louis of Bavaria, induced to enter 
German Empire, 177 

Lule Burgas, battle of, 437 

MacMahon, 
retreats, 12-13 
is defeated at Sedan, 14, 15 
tries to reestablish French mon- 
archy, 122 
resigns office, 123 
Macedonia, cockpit of the races, 
430-431 
center for First Balkan War, 
432 ff. 
Marne, Battle of, demonstrates 

true French character, 117 
Metz, 

French defeated at, 12 
surrenders, 18 
Milan, King of Serbia, 

attacks Bulgaria and is de- 
feated, 253-254 
worthless character and abdica- 
tion, 259 
Militarism, theory of, 331-332 
especially commended in Ger- 
many, 333 
comes into new vogue after vic- 
tory of Germany in 1871, 334 
ff. 
Mohammed V, proclaimed Sultan 

of Turkey, 287 
Moltke (the younger), belligerent 

sentiments of, in 1913, 478 
Moltke (the elder) assists Bis- 
marck in causing Franco- 
Prussian War, 1 ff. 
Monarchists (French) throw away 

their opportunities, 120 
Morgenthau, reports German plot 

against world's peace, 491 
Morocco, problem of, 402 

geographical importance and po- 
litical weakness of, 403, 404 



554 



INDEX 



Morocco — continued 

Abdul-Aziz, sultan, his misrule 

and extravagance, 404 
European powers interested in, 

405 
English interests in, 405 
French interests in, 406 
German and Spanish interests 

in, 407 
France, England and Spain 

reach friendly agreement 

over, 408 
Germany appears to ignore, 400 
William II lands at Tangier, 

410 
Germany attacks French policy 

in, 411 
forces resignation of Delcasse, 

411 
Algeciras conference over, 412 
French intervention in, 414 
Caillaux, negotiates with Ger- 
many for understanding about 

Morocco, 416 
Agadir incident, 417 
settlement favorable to France, 

418 

Napoleon III, superficial successes 

and downfall, 118-119 
Nicholas II, summons Hague 
Peace Conference, 335 
pliable character of, 462 
compelled to take action to save 

Serbia, 506-507 
orders mobilization, 512 
Nietzsche, utility of his political 
philosophy to Pan-Germanism, 
345 
North German Confederation, 175 

Omdurman, battle of, 111 
Ottoman Empire, see Turkey 

Pacifism, theory of, 331, 333 
growth of before 1914, 466 ff. 



"Pacifism — continued 

makes more progress in non-Ger- 
man countries than in Germany, 

467 nt. 
ardent propaganda for, 468 
preached by R. N. A. Lane, 

("Norman Angell"), 468 
extolled in America and Eng- 
land, 488-489 
Pan-Germanism, beginnings of 
movement, 355 
vast literature of, 356 
wide claims of German excel- 
lence, 356 
aims deliberately for world em- 
pire, 356 
extremely desirous of colonies, 

359-360 
territorial schemings of, 362 ff. 
glorifies gospel of the sword, 363 
expounded by Bernhardi, 364 
preaches hostility towards Eng- 
land and France, 367-368 
expounded by Tannenberg, 370- 
371 
Pan-Germans, 

deliberately plot war early in 
1914, 480 ff. 
Pan-Slavism, influences Russia, 

457 
Papacy and Italian government, 
149 ff. 
"law of guarantees" unaccept- 
able, 151 
Paris, besieged by Prussians, 15 

surrenders, 18 
Peace, cheerful prospect of, in 

1914, 465 
Plevna, 

defended by Osman Pasha, 86 
surrendered, 87 
Poland, its partition a crime, 

231 
Poles, condition bad but not hope- 
less under Russia, 232 
better off under Austria, 232 



INDEX 



555 



Poles — continued 

very unhappy under Prussia, 
233 

not easily Germanized, 234 

''land-bill" directed against 
them, 235 

join in '"school-strike" 236 

discriminated against by Prus- 
sian officials, 237 

very bitter against German 
rule, 238 
Prussia, Constitution of, 182 if. 

extremely undemocratic docu- 
ment, 183-186 
Prussian thoroughness, example 
of, 192 

Reichstag, 180 

serious weakness of, 181 
Roberts, Lord, 

warns against Germany, 399 
is derided by British Liberals, 
400 
Roumanians, 
origins of, 73 

unite their principalities, 74 
proclaim Prince Carol, 75 
[See also Second Balkan War] 
Russia, 

only partly Europeanized, 51-53 
attempts at liberalism, 54, 55 
foreign ambitions in 1870, 56 
thrusting towards Constanti- 
nople, 58 
very angry at annexation of 

Bosnia, 423 
foreign policy of before 1914, 

450 ff. 
geographical relations determine 

policies, 451 
has ambitions for Constanti- 
nople, 452 
for outlet on Pacific, 453 
is defeated by Japan, 454 
schemes again for Constanti- 
nople, 455 



Russia — continued 

makes friends with England, 456 
influenced by Pan-Slavism, 457 
is angered by Austrian aggres- 
sions, 459 
growth of cities in, 460-461 
industrial growth in, 461 
commercial friction with Ger- 
many, 462 
pro-German and anti-German 

party in, 463 
begins mobilization to save Ser- 
bia, 510 
orders complete mobilization, 
512 
Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), 85 
if. 



Salisbury [Lord], 

tries to save Turks, 83 
fails to interfere in Armenia, 
278-279 
San Stefano, 

treaty of, 87-88 
Sazonof, tries to avert war, 497 ff. 
drafts formula which might 
keep peace, 507 
Schleswig-Holstein problem, 228 ff. 
persecution of Danish language, 
229 
Secret Report of German Govern- 
ment on prospects of war, 
1913, 476 ff. 
Sedan, surrender of, 15 
Serajevo, crime of, 484 ff. 
Serbs [South Slavs], 

fall under Turkish power, 69 
win independence, 70 
struggles and troubles of, 71-72 
Serbia, declares war on Turkey 
(1876) and is defeated, 82 
defeated by Bulgaria, 253-254 
under King Milan, 259-260 
under King Alexander, 260-262 
King Peter proclaimed, 262 



556 



INDEX 



Serbia — continued 

very angry at annexation of 

Bosnia, 422 
provokes Austria over Bosnia, 

483 ff. 
receives ultimatum from Aus- 
tria, 493 ff. 
asked to sign away independ- 
ence, 4!)5 
abjectly concedes almost every- 
thing, 498 
is spurned by Austria, 499 
Shakespeare, German translations 
declared superior to original, 
357 
Slivnitza. battle of, 253 
Socialists [German], growing vote 
of, 216-217 
represented general discontent 
with Prussian regime, 218 
Stambulov, prime-minister of Bul- 
garia, 250-258 
Sudan, see Equatoria 

Tel-el-Kebir, battle of, 103 
Tewfik, Khedive of Egypt, 101, 

102 
Thiers, 

negotiates with Bismarck, 21 
induces France to accept repub- 
lican government, 121 
Third Republic [French], 

circumstances of its founding, 

119 
constitution of 1875, 121, 122 
government sometimes very 

weak, 125 
cabinets numerous and irre- 
sponsible, 126 
parliamentary system does not 

always work well, 127 
Renewed friction with Germany 

after 1911, 136 
Acquires many valuable colonies, 

137 
Inherently very strong nation 



Third Republic — continued 

although with superficial 
weaknesses, 139 
Three Class System [Prussian], 

184-186 
Three Emperors' League, 310 
Tirpitz (Von), strengthens Ger- 
man navy, 383 ff. 
Treitschke, his reasons for desir- 
ing Alsace-Lorraine for Ger- 
many, 130-131 
great influence of, 346 ff. 
glorifies "the State" as above 

moral law, 348 
teaches duty of Germany to ex- 
pand, 349 
teaches hatred of Britain, 349 
Triple Alliance, concluded, 318 
Tripoli, desired and seized by 

Italy, 427 ff. 
Tunis, Italy enraged at French 

protectorate over, 317 
Turkey (Ottoman Empire), 
wretched state of, 59, 60 
spared by Crimean War, 62 
evil rule in, 63 
constitution proclaimed (1876), 

S2 
it is suspended, 85 
rejects "London Protocol," 84 
becomes friendly with Germany, 

270 
misrule by "Young Turks," 425 

ff. 
disastrous First Balkan War, 

433 ff. 
Seeks armistice, 439 
signs Treaty of London, 440 
See also, Abdul-Hamid 
Turkey, Asiatic, very mutifarious 

national elements in, 268 
Turko-Italian war, 428 ff. 



Venezuela, German attempt on, 
360 



INDEX 



557 



Versailles, scene of proclaiming of 
German Empire, 162 

War of 1866 (Prussia vs. Aus- 
tria), results of same, 174 
War Practices (German), 343 
William II, becomes Emperor, 206 
dismisses Bismarck, 206-207 
his character, 208 ff. 
his government autocratic and 

personal, 209 
open to flattery, 209-210 
his versatility, 210 
steeped in Prussian militarism, 

211 
typical sentiments of, 212-213 
ministers of, 213-215 
worthless favorites of, 215 
sentiments swing to war, 223 
visits Abdul-Hamid, 273 
second visit to Turkey after Ar- 
menian massacre, 279-281 
expresses hope Germany may 
imitate greatness of Rome, 
372 
relations with England, 379 
sends telegram to Kriiger, 380 
urges strong navy, 382 ff. 



William II — continued 

intrigues with Czar in 1905 
against England, 387 

tries to placate British opinion, 
394 

lands at Tangier, Morocco, 410 

suddenly intervenes in Serbian 
crisis, 500 

holds great council of war, 502- 
503 

telegraphs warning message to 
Czar, 506 

makes fiery speech, 513 

subject of poem by Wm. Wat- 
son, 535 
World Empire, ambition for it dis- 
turbs long periods of history, 
350 ff. 
Worth, battle of, 10 

Young Turks, 

conspiracies against Abdul-Ha- 
mid, 284 ff. 



Zabern incident, 218-221 
makes Conservatives eager for 
war, 221 



H 63-79- 




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